I know this might sound silly, but I was wondering if anyone had any advice or a method of how they deisgn the colors of a cake.
I understand that it varies, but i notice that alot of cake (3 tier) have alternating colors. I seem to get overwhelmed and have a hard time deciding the color variations after picking out main color selection. Does anyone have a method they use??? or do you just go with it. I did a purple cake, and I don't care for that color, and had to coordinate the colors...it was hard for me. I used different shades. And studied other cake color trends. Hopefully thier is a tip on how to design colors so they flow...dark to light, light to dark???

Here's a color wheel that might be helpful:

http://cakecentral.com/articles/54/how-to-color-your-icing

Color chart helpful, ty! Still wondering if anyone has designing tips. I just read about designing a grad cake....they said to take school colors (ie. blue and red) and put with white on a 3 tier. It said white always in the middle....so I wwas curious if anyone has a standard method of placing colors??? Dark on the bottom??? Just would like to hear ideas.

There are no hard and fast rules. Relax and don't get uptight, that just takes the fun out of it. If you've made a mistake...eat it.

I think colors are one of the hardest things to get right, frankly. Color can make or break a cake. Some general color rules that I like to keep in the back of my mind are to keep the "depth/strength" of color the same...for example I am doing a 5 year old birthday cake in Orange and pink, one tier in each color. I want to make sure that they are both similar, in this case very bright. Some of the accent pieces will be more pastel but the basic, main colors are both the same strength. I always mix my colors several days ahead and then almost always adjust them closer to the date of use. In this case I mixed the orange and pink last week but looked at them again yesterday and decided the pink was too pastel against the orange so I adjusted it.

Some other things that I do: I use ivory fondant as my base if I want softer, muted colors, white if I want true, bright colors. Another thing I do is to mix a small amount of each color I am using into each of the other colors which I feel helps them to all blend together/have the same tone.

I often will look online at stationery, wrapping/scrapbook paper, invitation designs - do a Google Image search for these, to find a professionally designed palette of colors. Then I try to match these.

Contrast is also important too - if you want something to jump out at you, for example, lettering on a cake, or another focal point, you have to make sure there is a high level of contrast in the colors. Or, if you're looking for a more subtle, tone on tone effect, use colors similar in value/hue.

Hope this helps. Laurie

http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/homegardening/sceneccc7.html

This is about using colors in the garden but same rules can apply with cakes.

Colors next to each other on the color wheel go well together. Colors across from each other go well together. And colors that form a triangle go well together.

Thanks!! This is very helpful and will help me make desicions better and alot quicker....