Portico Shadow sets the weight of the palette in warmth and creativity, and Sandstone Dark is the swatch that breaks rank: a single brown that stops the set reading as one note. Portico Shadow to Pediment spans 78 points of lightness, so the palette can carry its own hierarchy without reaching for a second one. Pediment 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 Shadow a deep rust or umber, orange's heat banked into something earthy and lived-in.
Sandstone Dark a dusty taupe-brown, quiet and unassuming.
Column a burnt or terracotta orange, warmth read through a rustic, sun-worn filter.
Entablature reads as optimism and clarity, the fastest color to draw the eye, the hardest to ignore.
Pediment a peach or apricot tint, all the friendliness of orange with none of the volume.
The Enlightenment's archaeological return to Greece and Rome - Schinkel's Altes Museum colonnade reading Prussian sky against Greek portico, Soane's Bank of England as a ruinous fantasy, Jefferson's UVA as a republic of reason built in brick and white column.
Explore the full Neoclassical Architecture style guideIts decade on the timeline · 1750s