The Artful Canine Blog

As a designer of dog collars, I meet owners that struggle with choosing a dog collar color almost as much as they do when choosing their own clothes. Its perfectly understandable that dog owners want to make choices that compliment their dogs coat color.  After all, choosing a collar color that compliments a dogs natural beauty usually brings admiration and compliments!

Here’s 3 simple rules to guide you in choosing the right dog collar color

A contrasting collar on a black dog

1. Go for contrast between your dogs coat and the collar. This rule works for all dogs, but best for dogs with white or black coats. If you’ve got a white dog, go for dark colors, and if you’ve got a black dog, go for light colors. Bright colors work well for both coats, with exception to yellows on a white coat. With a black or white dog, there’s actually not too many colors that won’t look good, but the more contrasting the color, the better it will look on your dog.
2. Think Temperature when choosing dog collars for tan, red, or brown coats. These coats are warm colors,  so pick cool, contrasting colors like blue, purple, and green. If you want a collar to make a statement, then think cool brights like raspberry or turquoise. Grey coats are considered a cool color, so reds, oranges, and yellow/greens will look great on this color coat.
   

   Warm red contrasting collar on a cool, gray coat.

3. Avoid collar colors that are the same or similar to your dogs coat color unless it contains a contrasting color or print. For example, tan will look drab and dirty on a white dog, and navy will do the same for a black dog. Browns look bland on gray coats, and reds get lost on red coats. But a black color with a bright pink print will look great on a black coated dog. Why? Rule number 1 – contrast!

These simple rules will take the guesswork out of your decisions so that you can have fun shopping for your dog! There are so many collars to choose from, now the only hard part will be picking one – or two, or three …