Early last week, Kathryn from Crochet Concupiscence asked “What is your crochet word of the year?” The one that instantly came to mind for me was color!

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Some crocheters enjoy working with a limited color palette and have no interest in exploring different colors while others have an almost paralyzing fear of experimenting with color. If you fall into the latter category, you already know that color has a major impact on the style and mood of your crochet project, but maybe you need some support in venturing into new color territories.

Whether color is your crochet word of the year, too, or you just want to switch things up a bit, check out these five tips to get you started along a more (or differently) colorful crochet (or knitting) journey.

Watch my video below, or read on for more tips!

If you can’t see the video above, click here to watch it on YouTube.

1) Follow a Designer or Blogger Known for Color Play

One way to step outside your personal color comfort zone is by using tried and true combinations of yarns recommended by designers and bloggers known for their color sense.

• Susan Carlson from Felted Button (interviewed here),
• Janaya Chouinard from Charmed by Ewe,
• Leonie Morgan,
• Stacey Trock from FreshStitches (interviewed here), and
• Heidi Yates from Snappy Tots…

…are just a handful designers and bloggers known for their love of color. Take a look at their work and draw your inspiration from their finished items and patterns.

2) Browse a Color Inspiration Website

Several websites offer daily, weekly or seasonal color palettes that can inspire your next crochet project.

My favorites are:

• Color Collective, a blog featuring color palettes drawn from images;
• Colour Lovers, a community that shares color inspirations and palettes;
• Design Seeds, a website that offers color inspiration posts and also provides the ability for readers to search through palettes by color value and theme; and
• Pantone, which shares seasonal color reports that predict fashion and home décor trends.

Pick and choose colors from any of these palettes to get a stylish and coordinated feel.

3) Use a Color Palette Generator

If you have a photograph that you find inspiring or have seen an image online with colors that appeal to you, a web-based palette generator can help you separate the individual colors so you can match them to solid color yarns. Color Hunter is one such website. I took a photograph of these colorful hydrangeas a few years ago…

…and Color Hunter generated this palette.

I can use this to choose solid yarns to create the same look and feel of those hydrangea bushes.

4) Let the Yarn Guide You

Choose a solid color yarn that speaks to you, and generate a palette of colors to combine with it. Paletton – The Color Scheme Designer allows you to select any color in the rainbow and then generates a color scheme with options for mono, complement, triad, tetrad, analogic or accented analogic colors.

5) Choose a Multi-Colored Yarn

You can also put yourself completely in the hands of the yarn company, and pick a multi-colored yarn for your next crochet or knitting project. Many large yarn companies and independent dyers, like Crystal Palace, Lorna’s Laces, madelinetosh, Malabrigo, Mrs. Crosby, and Noro, are known for their beautiful color combinations.

This option has the added benefit of minimizing yarn changes, and thus reducing the number of yarn tails you have to weave in at the end of your project. (You can find more tips for working with multi-colored yarns in this post.)

Bonus Tip: Consider a Temperature Project

If you’d rather just have (most) of the color decisions taken out of your hands, consider a temperature project. You can learn more about these conceptual projects, where you crochet (or knit) an infographic of a year in your life, in this post.

With these easy tips, you should be ready to embrace new colors in your next crochet project.

What are your favorite tips for embracing color?