Arne JacobsenColor Palette
Arne Jacobsen's color range comes from the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, the 1960 building he designed from facade to cutlery, and from his own 1951 house north of the city. Its center is a reserved green-and-blue scheme: Room 606 Green (#7D9E8E), the soft tone he had applied to Royal Copenhagen's fluted porcelain, and Midnight Blue (#283E63). Around them sit the material neutrals of the hotel: wengé, brushed steel and a light cream plaster, plus a few warm accents. This page gives each color an exact hex code, its documented origin, and guidance on where it does and does not work.
Signature
Signature Colors
Arne Jacobsen built the SAS Royal Hotel's interiors around a green-and-blue scheme, and that pair sits at the center of his palette. Room 606 Green is the soft, muted green he selected for the hotel's tableware and walls; Midnight Blue is the deeper blue that anchored the rooms. Together they carry the reserved, cool-toned character of his Danish modernism.
Room 606 Green
#719F91
Walls, joinery, tableware glazeA soft, greyed blue-green modeled on the muted tone Jacobsen chose for Royal Copenhagen's Green Fluted Plain in 1960, then repeated across the hotel walls. Its low chroma and faint blue cast keep it restful at wall scale, where a clearer green would turn insistent.
Midnight Blue
#01386A
Lamps, upholstery, accent joineryA deep, slightly desaturated navy drawn from the midnight blue Louis Poulsen used on the AJ lamp, the fixture Jacobsen designed for the same hotel in 1957. Dark enough to read almost black in low light, it holds a blue identity that keeps a room cool rather than heavy.
Structural
Structural Neutrals
Three neutrals give the palette its material base. Wengé is the dark African hardwood Jacobsen specified for the hotel's wall-mounted tables and frames; Cylinda Steel is the brushed stainless of his 1967 Cylinda Line tableware; Søholm Cream is the light, warm wall tone recorded in his own 1951 row house at Klampenborg.
Wengé Wood
#363737
Furniture, veneer, trim, framesA near-black brown matching wengé, the dense hardwood Jacobsen used for the SAS Royal Hotel's wall-mounted table system and desk edges. Its warmth is almost imperceptible until it sits beside the green walls, where it supplies the weight that stops a light interior from floating.
Cylinda Steel
#A9A9A9
Metalware, hardware, lamp basesA cool mid-grey that approximates the brushed stainless steel of Cylinda Line, the hollowware Jacobsen developed with Stelton and launched in 1967. The finish is matte, not mirrored, so the tone stays flat and quiet rather than throwing highlights around a room.
Søholm Cream
#FAEBD7
Walls, ceilings, cabinetry frontsA warm off-white matching the light cream emulsion paint that color archaeologists found on most walls of Jacobsen's own 1951 house at Strandvejen 413. Slightly yellow rather than grey, it reads as daylight on plaster and keeps the greens and blues from turning cold.
The Designer
Arne Jacobsen (1902–1971) was a Danish architect who trained at the Royal Danish Academy and worked across buildings, furniture, textiles, lighting and tableware.
The SAS Royal Hotel (1960), now the Radisson Collection Royal Hotel, was his total-design project: he controlled the curtain wall, the interiors, the Egg, Swan and Drop chairs (all 1958), the AJ lamp (1957) and the Cylinda Line tableware (1967) that followed. The hotel's colors were a deliberate green-and-blue composition. Jacobsen had the lobby and conservatory built around green shades and glass, and had Royal Copenhagen restyle its Blue Fluted Plain pattern in a soft green he selected for the hotel restaurant in 1960. Fabric and paint records describe the rooms as a greyish, greenish blue scheme, matched to the Rain upholstery and the printed Semicircles pattern, with wengé and blue Formica surfaces. Jacobsen earlier used the same cool family at Bellavista (1934) and in his own 1951 house.
Use sparingly
Accent Colors
Jacobsen's interiors were not colorless. Against the reserved greens and neutrals he set a small number of stronger tones, a pairing Louis Poulsen later studied when it reworked the AJ lamp. Søholm Ochre and AJ Rust Red are the two warm accents documented in that work: an earth yellow from his own house, and the lamp's rusty red.
Søholm Ochre
#B8860B
Single accent walls, textilesAn earth yellow matching the okkergul accent wall documented in Jacobsen's Strandvejen house, where it sat beside blue-green and grass-green in otherwise cream rooms. Muted by brown, it behaves like pigment rather than light, marking one plane without setting the whole room shouting.
AJ Rust Red
#A0522D
Lamps, single chair, ceramicsA burnt, slightly brownish red taken from the rusty red in the expanded AJ lamp color range inspired by Jacobsen's watercolors and fabric samples. It is darker and duller than a signal red, so it can appear on a lamp shade or chair without dominating a green and blue room.
What to skip
Colors to Avoid
These three tones fight the palette through different mechanisms: an over-saturated synthetic green, a hot industrial orange, and a cold blue-grey. Each breaks the cool, muted, material character that holds the Jacobsen scheme together. None of them belongs to his world; they arrive through default software palettes and generic schemes that mistake brightness for clarity.
Acid Chartreuse
#7FFF00
A near-fluorescent yellow-green with full chroma and no grey in it. Set beside Room 606 Green it makes the muted green read as dirty grey, and its synthetic signal looks like warning tape rather than the soft, sea-toned green Jacobsen drew from the water and sky.
Safety Orange
#FF8C00
A fully saturated industrial orange with no brown in its mix. Where Jacobsen's ochre is earthed by pigment, this tone glows and pulls the eye from every other surface, so a single object in it reorganizes a room around itself and undoes the restraint the rest of the palette works to build.
Cold Slate
#708090
A blue-cast mid grey that reads clinical against the palette's warm cream and neutral steel. The blue undertone fights both the yellow of Søholm Cream and the green of Room 606 Green, leaving surfaces that look dirty rather than cool, and it drains the warmth out of wood and skin.
About this palette
Jacobsen's greens, blues, wenge and cream tones were paint, dye and veneer, and no official RGB or Pantone codes exist for them; the Arne Jacobsen archive, Royal Copenhagen and the Realdania restoration records describe the scheme in words and photographs rather than values. Every hexadecimal value on this page is therefore anchored to the nearest named colour in the matplotlib CSS4 or XKCD table, which supplies the greens and neutrals as well as the accents and the three clash tones in Colours to Avoid. Read all ten as reproducible screen stand-ins for a documented interior.
FAQ
Common Questions
What is the Arne Jacobsen color palette?+
The Arne Jacobsen color palette is the green-and-blue range he used in the SAS Royal Hotel (1960) and his own earlier and later work. Its center is a soft, muted green and a deep blue: Room 606 Green (#7D9E8E) and Midnight Blue (#283E63). Around them sit three material neutrals — wengé, brushed Cylinda Steel, and a light cream plaster — plus two warm accents, Søholm Ochre (#C48F2B) and AJ Rust Red (#A64A2B). The palette is cool, low in chroma and material-led; it is not a set of invented fashion colors but a record of paint, dye, wood and steel used across one architect's buildings and products.
How did Arne Jacobsen think about color?+
Jacobsen treated color as part of a total design, not a layer applied at the end. At the SAS Royal Hotel he set a cool green-and-blue scheme against dark wengé and, in the conservatory, an emphasis on green; fabric and paint records describe the rooms as a greyish greenish blue matched to the Rain upholstery. He avoided loud effects, which is why the greens are greyed and the blue is dark rather than bright. Louis Poulsen later noted that he confronted strong colors with reserved ones, and its researchers studied his own color plate, fabric samples and watercolors when extending the AJ lamp range. Boldness and restraint sat together in his work.
How should I apply this palette in an interior?+
Build the room on Søholm Cream (#EDE6D6) walls, then place Room 606 Green (#7D9E8E) on one large plane rather than everywhere: it is greyed enough to hold a wall, but it still carries the scheme and loses its calm if it wraps every surface. Use Wengé Wood (#3B2A22) for tables, frames or veneer and Cylinda Steel (#A5A8A6) for hardware and lamp bases as real materials, not paint. Add Midnight Blue (#283E63) through lighting and one upholstered piece. Hold the two accents to single objects. The result should read as cool and quiet with a few deliberate warm notes.
Can I use the Arne Jacobsen palette in branding or product design?+
Yes, and it signals Danish modernism, restraint and material craft rather than trend color. Use Søholm Cream (#EDE6D6) as the page or packaging ground and Room 606 Green (#7D9E8E) as the primary brand tone — it is distinctive without shouting, and it photographs well. Midnight Blue (#283E63) reads as an authoritative near-black for type and icons, warmer than pure black and more characterful. Keep a single accent, either Søholm Ochre (#C48F2B) or AJ Rust Red (#A64A2B), for one element such as a button or marker. Avoid gradients and gloss; the palette belongs to flat, matte, material surfaces.
How is this different from the Verner Panton color palette?+
Both are Danish and mid-century, but they pull in opposite directions. Verner Panton's palette runs on saturated, synthetic, glossy plastic color and psychedelic geometry: vivid oranges, purples and yellows on non-natural surfaces. Jacobsen's palette is cool, greyed and material-led — a muted green, a deep blue, wengé, steel and cream, drawn from buildings and interiors rather than from injected mouldings. Panton confronted a room with color and pattern across every surface; Jacobsen held color back and let material and daylight do much of the work. Use Panton for energy and pop, Jacobsen for calm, structure and a quieter, architectural mood.
What colors should I avoid with this palette?+
Avoid fully saturated industrial colors, which cannot coexist with a low-chroma scheme. Acid Chartreuse (#7FFF00) makes Room 606 Green read as dirty grey; Safety Orange (#FF8C00) has no brown in its mix, so it glows and pulls attention from every other surface; and Cold Slate (#708090) carries a blue cast that fights both the cream and the green, leaving walls that read dirty rather than cool. Each of these is common in default digital palettes and in generic modern schemes. If you need a third cold or warm tone, choose a greyed version within the material range instead of a bright one.
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