Rewards
Written by Michaela MacBlake Matthews
Welcome back to another edition of Color Swatches For The Soul, where we are taking a closer look at the symbolism of shades, and how to set the mood for your craft projects, fashion, and lifestyle with color psychology! Today we’re looking at Dusty Plum.
The Purple Family
In color psychology, and in the chakra system, purples represent spirituality and intuition. As one of the darker hues in the spectrum, purple often represents the night sky, or venturing into the greater unknown.
Purple is a cosmic color, and is composed of a mixture between active reds or pinks, and observational blues. Together, this secondary color loves to observe its own actions, and actively seek out new observations. It is this combination of internal and external movement that gives purple its royal and spiritual footing.
How Dusty Plum Sets The Mood
Dusty Plum is an intriguing shade of the mystic purple, because it is a softened shade with a heavy dose of white, while also leaning more toward the active red hue. This combination provides a balanced dynamic between active and passive energies, representing calm, steady efforts.
The lack of blue in this purple makes it a less observational, thinking shade, and more of a nod to exercising your expertise from existing knowledge. While blue is the color of gradual, watery movement, red represents the stationary and upward movement of fire. For this reason, Dusty Plum is a fantastic shade for being slightly experimental in a familiar setting, and carries a strong essence of home and routine, without feeling mundane.
How To Use Dusty Plum In Your Craft Projects
Dusty Plum is the perfect mood color for creating something that is timeless and respectable, while still feeling youthful, fresh, and having room to grow. It is modest while still being energetic, and outgoing without being loud.
Crafts with Dusty Plum in their palette are fantastic gifts for people who are taking new steps to further who they’ve truly always been. It is the perfect color for new entrepreneurs, college admissions, and newlyweds to help inspire the future, while staying grounded in the present.
Color Palettes For Dusty Plum
Dusty Plum is most often paired with neutrals, such as black and white marble in the home, or bronzed, rose gold tones in an outfit. Dusty Plum brings vitality to creams and taupes, innovation to deep chocolate browns, or a bit of surefire spunk to blacks and greys.
Although it is a difficult shade to pair with other hues, it can be done! Dusty Plum can become the icing on the cake when paired with strong emerald greens, teals, and navy blues. In this altered peacock palette, the softer shade of purple helps to tame and balance the sharp thinking and adventurous blue, by showing that softer, more body-present red.
In contrast, Dusty Plum can also stand well with brighter aqua, and creamy sunset tones like pale lemon, pink lemonade, and sherbet orange. In this context, our dynamic purple takes on the role of steadiness and wisdom once more, providing a bit of structure to a very fun-and-sun color scheme!
However you style your shades, each combination bears the special essence of you! Whether it’s you in the moment, at a Tuesday morning class, or you as your best self in the years to come…
If you can feel it, there’s a color for it!
"Mac" is on the Lifestyle Team here at Darn Good Yarn, and loves taking a ‘teach a man to fish’ approach to creative therapy. She is certified in neuro-linguistic programming, and is also the surreal artist and author behind Surrealismac.