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Imagine, a handy reference guide to the wonderful world LEGO color! Sorted into color families, creating a color wheel (like you may remember from art class). A special greyscale row hangs below the chromatic wheel, showing the full range of achromatic LEGO colors. Every color is clearly labeled, and a reference chart in the included instructions provides cross-reference information and background on LEGO color and color theory in general.
Inspiration
The inspiration for this is twofold - the first is the color chart LEGO has supplied to fans in the past, and we have seen physical versions of this palette in videos from the company. 
The second inspiration was the color wheel, a foundational tool in understanding color theory. Applying the color wheel model to LEGO colors helps me to better visualize color relationships as I work on my own projects.
The second inspiration was the color wheel, a foundational tool in understanding color theory. Applying the color wheel model to LEGO colors helps me to better visualize color relationships as I work on my own projects. The build
While the structure does involve many more parts than a traditional LEGO color palette (which can even work on a single baseplate), the Color Hex-Wheel is geometrically simple.
- Technic beams can easily form equilateral triangles. From your geometry classes, you may recall that an equilateral triangle has equal-length sides and equal angles of 60 degrees.
- Forming a polar array (aka, copying and rotating) around a center point, of 6 equilateral triangles, creates a hexagon.
- Filling this in with extra rows (creating a spider-web of sorts)
- Because the really cool thing is how this can interact with the 2x2 round tiles. By skipping every other stud, you can set up a R16mm pattern (almost like a pointillism painting) on a hex grid!
The reason for all this geometry and parts? It goes back to the color wheel (or hex grid, to be more accurate).
Features
The unique thing of this project is the multiple purposes it can fulfill. It can be an education piece, a display piece highlighting the wide spectrum of colors in the LEGO system of brick, and it can be a reference tool that can be future-proofed!
- Educational - Provides a great, interactive way for kids of all ages to learn about color theory.
- Display piece - Could be hung on the wall as a display piece or as a...
- Reference piece - The numbered tile approach would be used to reference color names and alternative, fan-created names such as those on Bricklink.
- Future proof - Over 170 spots, with only about half of them filled, means plenty of room to add colors in the future!
Color disclaimers and grouping disclaimers
There are many considerations out there about what a proper color wheel should consist of. People see color differently, and color can have widely different meanings across cultures. Some people have various forms of color vision deficiency (I have an issue with this in one eye), while others actually see more color! Most people can "see" (ie differentiate) about a million colors through three groups of rods in their eyes, known as trichromacy. Some people have Tetrachromacy, meaning they have a fourth cone in their eyes. This allows for them to perceive 100x more color variations than most people!
With so many colors and so many ways to interpret color, how do you sort all this? I nearly went mad! I played with parts, made Excel charts, converted RGB to HSV or CMYK, checked brick against swatch books...
Given all that, what I ended up doing was taking the LEGO colors available today, and then I grouped them into the traditional primary/secondary groups (Red-Blue-Yellow, and Orange-Green-Purple). From there, I tried a few arrangements that looked good, and could also provide complimentary color examples. (Complimentary colors are usually defined as being across from each other on the wheel, and look good when positioned together in a work.) Dark colors worked best inward, and given all the sparkles and opalescence variants, transparent bricks worked best on the outside ring.
There may be some spots you disagree with my choices, and that's cool! I welcome community input.
General disclaimers
- I did my best to sort the colors into "color families", but I won't claim the pattern as shown is perfect. I have notably left a few gaps where they aren't clear and current LEGO equivalents, notably vermilion.
Parts disclaimers
- The greatest limiters on the center were the lack of a half-beam in 3M length (without being a lever, so no axles).
- The current design filled every peg hole in the beams- that likely wouldn't be necessary, especially further out from the center. Some 3M pegs are needed to ensure strength, especially if you wanted to hang this on your wall!
- The backside is a bit of a color nightmare- it would look cool with all white pegs, but that would obviously raise costs. White half-pegs with knob could be used across, but would be weaker.
- The current design uses two element designs not in the current selection.
- I used the flick fire missile base to hold the 2x2 round plates- the bar part of the flick missile goes into black friction pins below. This could be recreated with current parts by using the half friction pin with knob, and a 3M bar running through both it and the black friction peg.
- The other is an older technic lever (the helicopter rotor piece from around 2010). There may better ways to establish the pattern, I am still giving this thought!
- An outlier is the lack of a 5M half-beam in white. I went with medium grey, which is available. Having white available would be visually more appealing.
- Another parts issue is the "missing" 2x2 round tiles in colors not currently available, including transparent elements. A surprising amount of this could be recreated right now with (recently) available parts or similar parts: (Here's what that would look like:) However, the most common solution, the 1/4 circle tiles, would require repositioning and resizing the text. Another option, especially for people who want this as a display, would be to include printed and non-printed versions of each tile.
However, this obviously would increase costs, and leads directly into...
- The last consideration is the reference text on the tiles.
- These drew direct inspiration from the LEGO palette, but required a location change due to the shift from squares to circles.
- Printing numbers on 80+ unique elements would be expensive. However, the numbers would be useful, especially when working between Bricklink and Pick-a-Brick, and jumping between LEGO Digital Designer and LEGO Bricklink Studio.
- While I generally dislike stickers/decals for fans to assign, that would make it more economical. However, there are some very slight color variations on some hues, and I would worry about everyone (especially fans with vision deficiencies) being able to assign the correct numbered sticker to the correct part. This could be solved with some creative numbered bagging and grouping, to prevent Nougat from being labeled as Medium Nougat.
- The numbers are great, but what do they mean? I prototyped some examples using a 8x16 tile below the monochromatic row, but it just made it a bit clunky. However, that would provide enough room for a decal or printed chart to go on the 2 large tiles.
- However, that means the reference tiles would need to be updated every time a color is added or removed. For that reason, I think including the reference chart in the instruction booklet is more useful (and more cost effective).
In conclusion
If you have read this far, thank you so much! I hope you like this Color Hex-Wheel enough to support the project. From my end, I am thankful for the glimpses of color theory shared with us from The LEGO Group. There have also been some great color reference work done throughout the FoL community. While I have not worked directly with any of them, my thanks for the inspiration go out to Ryan Howerter's Color List, Chris Clarke's LEGO Color Palette 2023 article on Brick Nerd, and the amazing team at New Elementary.
(And yes, I know I left two "Easter Eggs" in the current colors palette. A man can dream, though. A man can dream.)
By
molrak
Help your fellow builder by leaving your feedback based on these three criteria:
- Originality: How original is this - never seen before?
- Building Techniques: How much skill do you think the creator of this MOC has, in terms of building technique?
- Details: Express how much you like the details of the build.
Your feedback is only shown to the creator as well as yourself. It is not available for other users to see. The creator won't see your user name.