Spring Festival Colour Palette春节

Spring Festival, 春节, is the one moment when an entire market agrees on a palette. The dominant note is red — 赤 in its many named registers — because red carries luck, warmth and welcome, and it is everywhere: lanterns, couplets, envelopes, packaging. Layered over it is the gold of spring: the pale yellows of 立春, Start of Spring, the first solar term of the year, when the light turns and the first buds appear. Together the two notes read as optimism and prosperity.

For an international brand, the useful discipline is restraint. Pick a single named red — 朱砂 (zhūshā, cinnabar) is warm and celebratory, while 绛 is too solemn for a festival — and let gold do the accenting rather than competing with it. Keep to two or three colours; the season is loud enough already, and a cleaner palette will stand out against the wall of red that greets shoppers.

The taboos matter more than the palette. White and off-white belong to funerals and mourning in Chinese contexts, so a white-led New Year creative reads as cold or even inauspicious, and black carries the same risk. Avoid wrapping gifts in plain white paper, and skip four-item sets, since 四 sounds like death. Keep the red envelopes red.