Which color schemes work?

You cannot argue about taste, and there are no rules about what color combinations work or not. But somehow there are color schemes that come out great in a presentation, and with certain ones I have a very hard time making a deck look good. Here are my random experiences:

• Colour schemes with fewer contrasting colours in it tend to work better. You can create beautiful minimalist shades with grey shades and black, with a dash of a bright accent color here and there. In case of three (or more) contrasting colours, I tend to pick one of the three as my main accent color, and reduce the prominence of the other 2
• Deep colours work better than faded pastel ones. What looks great in print, might not work on a screen. Especially when you make the backgrounds of your slides white. Contradicting my first point, a series of deep colours can look great of they are related, and not contrasting. I have designed great looking decks with 5 to 7 related colours.

So, whenever you are thinking about new colours for your company, create a few presentation slides to evaluate options rather than deciding on the look of a logo. Logo colours can look great, but seeing them used in a business presentation is another challenge.

If you are going to work mainly with dark backgrounds, use that as your color testing ground. And vice-versa, if you find that your colours simply do not look good on white, switch to dark background presentations. I have applied this rescue trick a few times with clients.