Limestone sets the weight of the palette in warmth and creativity, and Portico Dark is the swatch that breaks rank: a single brown that stops the set reading as one note. Deep Portico to Civic Light spans 79 points of lightness, so the palette can carry its own hierarchy without reaching for a second one. Civic Light is the loudest thing in the set and every swatch beside it is warm too, which gives the palette no way to cool a page down and no colour to rest an eye on.
Portico Dark a near-black espresso brown, weight and gravity without going fully neutral.
Limestone a burnt or terracotta orange, warmth read through a rustic, sun-worn filter.
Stripped Column a burnt or terracotta orange, warmth read through a rustic, sun-worn filter.
Civic Light a peach or apricot tint, all the friendliness of orange with none of the volume.
Deep Portico reads as pure authority: sophistication, power, and the visual weight that makes everything placed near it feel more serious.
Classical proportion with ornament removed - the 1930s compromise between Modernism's abstraction and government's need for civic authority, producing Paul Philippe Cret's Federal Reserve buildings and the ambiguous gravitas of interwar state architecture.
Explore the full Stripped Classicism style guideIts decade on the timeline · 1920s