Try 10 FREE color palettes that sidestep greenwashing, offering more interesting—and just as eco-minded—color inspiration for sustainable design.
Perhaps your brand is aiming for a net zero footprint or switching to more sustainable business practices, and it’s time to share the exciting progress that you’ve made. Naturally, we often reach for all-green color schemes, but there are so many other ways to experiment with creative color for sustainable design.
Rethink your approach to eco color with these 10 alternative color palettes, where you’ll discover optimistic brights, rich earth hues, and acid pastels, among other creative color schemes.
Scroll down to find unexpected color palettes for sustainable social media designs, websites, and print campaigns, to help your environmental campaigns really hit home.
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Each color palette below includes the HEX code swatches that allow you to implement your color scheme on digital designs. If you want to use these schemes for print projects, it’s quick and easy to convert these to CMYK swatches.
When you land on an environmental color palette you love, simply right-click and save the image to your computer, or save to a mood board to come back to later.
1. Home Truths
While some businesses are taking exciting steps towards more sustainable practices, there’s an ominous reason why it’s so pressing to be taking these steps. Communicating effectively about the home truths of environmentalism, such as ocean pollution and climate change, can be challenging for businesses.
A color palette that is super bright and attention-grabbing will ensure viewers don’t overlook important messaging, while artificial tones bring to mind the colors of plastic, pollution and nuclear waste.
2. Turbine
Sustainable energy is the ultimate goal of a growing number of eco-minded businesses, with a growing awareness that driving for net zero emissions is not only desirable but necessary for the planet moving forward.
This color palette presents an alternative to greenwashing when communicating about sustainability and energy. The colors of earth and sky merge to create a palette that is both grounding and fresh, with relaxing aqua blue and burnt orange.
3. Kraft
A simple way for businesses to improve their sustainability status is to invest in environmentally-friendly packaging, and opt for recyclable and reusable materials and designs.
If your brand is looking to reimagine their packaging strategy, this palette is the perfect fit for sustainable design, with kraft paper colors combining with celadon green and violet red.
4. Baked Earth
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The rich colors of natural pigments and powders are the inspiration behind this earth-toned palette. Earth colors contain a small dose of brown, which gives these grounding colors a more natural and calming appearance.
This is a stylish color scheme that is environmentally-appropriate, and can be used to give branding, packaging designs or websites an eco edge that doesn’t compromise on style. Deep ochre yellow and clay red are lifted by bold Klein blue and dusty pink.
5. Linen and Flax
This soothing color palette takes its cues from the natural hues of linen, flax, and timber, making a nod to eco-friendly architecture, clothing, and products. Calming neutrals are a great choice for environmentally-themed brands that want to make sustainably-minded customers feel assured and relaxed.
A subtly stylish scheme that graduates through mink, dark gold, amber, and pale peach, this could be used for sustainable lifestyle brands or manufacturers.
6. Eco Warrior
Whether you’re a boots-on-the-ground activist or supportive of environmental causes through mindful life choices, we can all be eco warriors by making sustainable choices wherever possible. Sometimes, however, it’s really important to stand up for a pressing cause. For businesses looking to make a point, a serious yet bold color scheme will help to give your sustainable design more impact.
This high-contrast palette brings together dramatic dark tones of rich black, charcoal gray, and dark seafoam with attention-grabbing bright orange. Try this alternative environmental palette for website designs, apps or high-impact poster designs.
7. Coral Reef
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This aquatic color scheme is inspired by marine ecology and the ethereal colors of tropical coral reefs. With reefs disappearing en masse around the globe, the health of our oceans is in serious jeopardy. For businesses looking to educate about human impact on marine life, this palette will help keep your communications on theme.
Teal green, rose pink, and bittersweet coral make for a contrasting, on-trend scheme that balances cool and warm hues.
8. Clean Living
This color palette is inspired by the small everyday actions we can all take to make more environmentally-friendly choices. Bringing a reusable coffee cup into the office, using recyclable cutlery, and always having a shopping bag to hand are just a few of the very small things we can do to make a significant and positive impact on the environment in our daily lives.
Green does make an appearance in this palette, but this is far from a greenwashed scheme. Olive green is given more warmth and interest alongside egg yolk yellow, jasmine yellow, and pale gray.
9. Green City
The term “green city” refers to a city that has sustainable design at the heart of its development, promoting a smaller carbon footprint and ensuring a better quality of living for current and future residents. From city bikes to “living” buildings, renewable energy to electric public transport, there are lots of ways cities can become greener over time.
This colorful, paintbox brights palettes is inspired by the optimistic, forward-looking energy of green cities, such as Copenhagen, Singapore, and Vienna. Childlike, optimistic tones of brick red, mustard yellow, jungle green, and azure blue will make for inspiring brand designs.
10. Rewilding
Rewilding is the process of returning man-made landscapes to wild, biodiverse spaces. In some cases, extinct species may be reintroduced to the rewilding areas to try to return the landscape to its original ecosystem. With more countries embracing the concept of rewilding, sometimes compensating farmers for allowing some of their land to return to wilderness, the practice could be an incredible step towards reversing some of the damaging effects of urbanization and industrial farming.
This color palette is inspired by the soft colors of meadows, woodlands and wild flowers. Try this soothing scheme of heather purple, old gold, and mauve on nature-themed social media posts or flyer designs.
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