Team colors and how you can use them in your cosmetic loadouts

When it comes to TF2's art style, one of the important things about it are team colors. It's what keeps color usage consistent and also gives the game it's own unique look. With the ability to paint your cosmetics in various colors however, team colors don't seem to be used that often. In this guide, I'll explain the effectiveness of team colors and how you can use them in your cosmetic loadouts.

It's not just two colors

The purpose of team colors is to... well, tell what team something belongs to. It's not only done for players but for a lot of maps aswell to indicate what team belongs to an area of the map. Team colors are the reason why you'll never confuse your teammate for being on the wrong team (unless he's a Spy, of course) and why you don't accidently walk back into your own base on to capture the point. To achieve this, a palette is used, like this one:



Every bright or dark spot has atleast some team color to it, so that it's consistent and easily recognizable.

How to turn off the flashy-ness factor

When making a cosmetic loadout, you also have the option to paint them in a variety of colors. That also includes a few team colors. Now here's a few examples on some color combinations and how you can use team colors instead to make it look better!

Let's say I want to wear on my Medic a Vintage Tyrolean and I also want to make it the same color as his lab coat. When you think of a normal lab coat, it's usually a bright white, so I should use the Tinge paint, right? Well, as we've discussed before, a lot of things have some kind of team coloring to them. Medic's lab coat is no exception, as his lab coat does have a little bit of team coloring to it. Luckily for us, there's a paint called Waterlogged Lab Coat, which uses the same colors as his lab coat.


You can now see that the team colored hat doesn't stick out as much as the completely white one. Pretty nifty, isn't it?

As another example, let's use the Safe-n'-Sound for the Engineer and make it the same color as his hardhat. The Gold paint doesn't quite work on it either. Even though it has a yellow color to it, it includes some team coloring as well. For that, we'll have to use Cream Spirit.


Again, much better.

Team colored paints can also be used to make items stand out less from other items. Take a look at this example here:


This loadout uses items with darker colors to them, except for the Coif, which sticks out a bit. With the use of the Lab Coat color however, it blends in much nicer with the other items.

Heck, you could even make something like the Potassium Bonnett less jarring with it.



Though that won't change the fact that you're still wearing a freaking banana on your head.

The question section action

Where are the team colored paints from?

So I thought it would be nice to make a quick rundown of where what color is used from.

• Team Spirit is the main color for both teams.
  
• Cream Spirit are the yellow colors.
  
• Waterlogged Lab Coat is the color from Medic's lab coat.
  
• The Value of Teamwork is the color from Medic's backpack.
  
• Operator's Overalls is the color from Engineer's overalls.
  
• Balaclavas Are Forever is the color from Spy's mask. (also known as a balaclava)
  
• An Air Of Debonair is the color from Spy's suit.

How did you make those pictures?

For that I used a pretty handy site called http://loadout.tf, which allows you to customize your player with every type of cosmetic in the game.

Why did you make this guide?

Basically to show how important team colors can be. Team colors don't seem to get used that often (aside from Team Spirit) compared to flashy colors, so I wanted to spread some awareness about it.

You can't tell me what to paint my hats!

I'm not forcing you to change your mind. I'm just saying that some colors can stick out more than others, which you may or may want to consider when making your loadout.

[Nicky]

thanks for making this, my tf2 outfits look way better, sadly the paints are 2 bucks, compared to other paints.

[karrlovt]

It seems very nice. Deffinetly there are cosmetics that look better with team colors

[Evaldas256]

Team paints should have been the only paints added.

[CT-2448]

Very nice guide...If only the Boss was here.

[allen the dumpster]

Its spelt saturated

[Stale Popcorn from Last Night]

Nice guide! (As someone who makes color theory and such their b**** to make my art good (I'm also obbessed with colors and hues and whatnot so yee), this guide makes that side of me happy. Thank you for making this. uwu)

Also:
Hot Pink > Lime. That green is too saterated. >:T (I think I spelled that wrong)

[اليجولاليكاليج]

Green is all i need

[✿Mika✿]

Pink is all I need

[German pope]

really insreating

[allen the dumpster]

hot pink > lime