You know those design recommendations that urge you, especially when hesitant, to start with a picture and base your color selections on it? Here are some ideas on how to achieve it with a geeky starting point. I’ll select a photo, a painting, a still, a screencap or the like that is geeky in some way, and use mainstream photos to illustrate how a color combination pulled from that model image might work in real life.

House Baratheon is the royal house in Westeros at the beginning of George R. R. Martin‘s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire and the popular tv adaptation Game of Thrones. The house sigil is a rearing (or rampant) stag with a crown around its neck on a field of gold. The visual created for the HBO tv series is probably the most commonly seen version of the sigil, here on a cookie from the official online store:

In heraldry, gold is often depicted with yellow. I will, therefore, include both gold-black and yellow-black combinations below.

The combination of gold and black is luxurious. It can also be overwhelming if overdone. Choosing a neutral background like white, cream or tan and using gold (or yellow) and black as accent colors will deliver just enough of a punch, but not a “Hulk smash!” – like in the white, yellow and black bathroom by Cerasa, for example:

This gorgeous library below by Jerry Jacobs Design actually uses both yellow and gold in addition to black:

Sherri and John at Young House Love added red brick to the mix when they painted their front door, with great results:

Apart from adding other colors, you can also tone down the intensity of the yellow towards softer shades, or substitute dark greys instead of black. Or, like in the living room below, use dark metals to incorporate black:

Smaller home accents work particularly well, since the amount of color will be limited:

You can of course also carry the Baratheon sigil colors on you:

What do you think – a keeper combo or not?

P.S. Access other posts in the series with the geeky color combos tag.