Spice up your designs with a cinnamon color.

Learn how to use cinnamon and other colors to express warmth, resilience, and more in your design concepts.

Cinnamon isn’t just a convenient spice to have on hand — it’s a versatile design color too. Since every color has meaning, cinnamon often takes center stage when an artist or designer wants to evoke a feeling of warmth or earthy connections. Let’s explore more about this color and how to use it effectively in your designs.

The meaning of the color cinnamon.

Cinnamon is a warm, brownish-orange hue similar to its namesake spice, which comes from the inner bark of certain tree species. Because of this earthy association, the color cinnamon often symbolizes a sense of grounding, security, resilience, and dependability. It can also represent a sense of coziness.

For some, certain shades of brown can have more negative representations — such as dullness, predictability, and even isolation. Because cinnamon has warmer undertones than other browns, though, it’s typically associated with more positive feelings.

Similar colors to cinnamon.

If you’re looking for more variations of cinnamon, try experimenting with these colors: alloy orange (#C46210), caramel (#85461E), and golden brown (#996515).

Colors to pair with cinnamon.

Wheat, maroon, dark grey, and chocolate team up with cinnamon to create a calming, earthy color palette reminiscent of a pleasant autumn day. Experiment with cinnamon as the primary versus the accent color in these combinations and see how it affects the overall mood of your design.

You can also pair cinnamon with complementary colors. While yellow is the complement of pure blue, orange is the complement of medium blue. Since cinnamon embodies brownish-orange tones, choose colors like dark cyan or dodger blue to create a colorful contrast in your designs. Discover more ways you can spice up your graphic design concepts.

Try blending cinnamon and other brown colors into your next project. Find out what you can make — from logos and icons to illustrations and poster art — with Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign.