Today we have a guest blogger on the site. Please welcome Henry from Plastic Pirates…
I recently came out of my LEGO “dark ages.” My inspiration for getting back into LEGO was seeing some of the great train layouts people have built. I’ve always loved trains and buildings, and seeing them go together so well in Lego is irresistible! I’m especially fond of the modular building style, where you can combine individual buildings into a city block. LEGO makes a series of these modular buildings, but many imaginative builders have made their own.
One very effective technique that I’ve seen several builders use is to use one color for the main structure of the building, and use another, usually lighter color, to highlight it. They spend a lot of time designing and building the special details that make their structures unique, and the contrast between the dark and light colors really makes them stand out.
Police Headquarters
Rui Branco’s Police Headquarters is a great example of this. The white and light gray columns contrast beautifully with the two shades of blue that he used for the walls of the building.
Victorian House
Razzle-Jazzle built this beautiful Victorian House, using only two main colors. She used light gray for the building, and chose white for all the trim and highlights. Sometimes using fewer colors can result in a more striking model.
New Brickton Library
This library building by legoman34.geo uses equal amounts of white and gray bricks. He not only used white for the accents, he made two whole floors out of white bricks to contrast against the gray first floor and roof.
LEGO Modular Building: Cheese Shop And Museum
Palixa And The Bricks chose to make her building mainly in brown, but she also chose white for the accent, as well as using yellow around the entrance to the shop. The white windows and roof details really stand out against the brown.
If you are looking for the right accent color, you can use a color wheel (many of which are available online) to see which colors go well together, and which don’t.
Next time you work on a Lego building, choose an accent color that contrasts wth the main color to really make those special details pop!
Need bricks to make your own version of these creations, check out our store listings below:
About the Guest Blogger
Henry is a longtime fan of LEGO, whose first set, as far as he remembers, was 497 Galaxy Explorer.
His passion is recreating the world in miniature. He has been, at various times in his life, a model railroader, a miniature wargamer and a photographer.
Currently, he is working on building a railroad layout using LEGO trains. Henry still loves the Pirate theme as well.
His blog “Plastic Pirates” (www.plasticpirates.blogspot.com) is where you can find his ramblings on his current hobbies.