Best of BrickNerd: Weekend Highlight — Article originally published May 6, 2021.

Brown, white, tan, and grey are LEGO colors that often perfectly match when making houses. When creating simple cottages or buildings like the modular, those colors just work out very well. Because of that, other colors are often forgotten—or are most of us just playing it safe? Well, it’s a good thing that David, also know as Ayrlego, shows us how appealing buildings can be if you use brighter colors as well.

Buildings this colorful aren’t that unrealistic either. There are plenty of quarries that contain a yellowish stone. Also, plaster was used in more colors than common white—which is mainly the fixer-upper color of late-Victorian times. But as you can see, a different kind of “lime” stone can be used to give a building more character.

One of my favorite colors that David has used lately is yellow. It mixes perfectly with the light bluish grey quoin bricks and decorative crenelations—and it looks natural. I could imagine an all-yellow castle might be a little too much, so the use of dark tan on places where the plasterwork has weathered works out perfectly. Using bright foliage compliments the building further yet does not look out of place. Now, let’s ask David how he makes all those colors work!

Marco: Your buildings often come in colors that aren’t being used that often by other builders. Do you experiment with colors? And are there colors that you don’t use?

David: I do like using colours that aren’t often used although many of my crazier schemes have been modified back to a more conservative scheme before photography! Most of the time I play it safe and I don’t like mixing too many colours in a build as I think it can detract from the overall effect. Having said that, I do like to experiment with brighter colours and enjoy trying to make realistic-looking buildings out of colours that are unusual or seldom used.

Classic yellow is a current favourite of mine, and I have always had a love-hate relationship with using lime in my builds—so that is always fun to experiment with. I am working up the courage at the moment to order some coral coloured bricks. It’s such an obnoxiously bright colour that I’d love to try and create a realistic-looking house out of it.

I am also fascinated by some of the lesser-known LEGO colours. Once I saw a build on Google using a colour I didn’t recognize, and I immediately turned to BrickLink to find it and ended up ordering 200 medium green 1x2 bricks, which I have used occasionally now. A similar thing happened with light green and I now have some plates in that colour that I want to use in a castle landscape one of these days. I don’t think there are really any colours I wouldn’t consider using.

Marco: Do you use examples from drawings or movies, or where do you get your inspiration from?

David: I don’t consider myself a particularly innovative builder, and I draw a lot of inspiration from other builders in the community. My favourites list on Flickr is consulted during most builds at some stage! I have found that searching for 3D models on Google has provided some good inspiration for some builds. Other material I’ve used are the building models for computer games like Age of Empires and Empire Total War.

Marco: Some of your creations are digital—is that a way to try out colors that you don’t have?

David: I started experimenting with digital builds during periods where I had to travel away from my bricks for work. I think that having unlimited parts is more of a motivation for building digitally than experimenting with different colours. Usually, my digital builds are for larger projects that would be difficult to photograph and expensive to construct in real life. It is fun to be able to use bricks that are not currently produced in some colours in digital builds, and it is very handy to be able to change the colour scheme of a MOC with only a couple of clicks of the mouse!

Marco: Most of your creations are from Victorian times. Is this your favorite period to build in?

David: Actually I first became involved in the online community to build castle-themed scenes. When Brethren of the Brick Seas started in 2016, I signed up and quickly became addicted. BoBS is set in the 17th - 18th centuries and it seems that the imperial/pirate theme has dominated my builds since then! I still enjoy a castle build occasionally and started experimenting with neo-classic space last year. Sometimes I feel I really need to diversify my builds but BoBS keeps drawing me back in!

Marco: Thanks for your time David. I feel I have to experiment more with colors now!

What colors do you like to build with that are non-traditional for a specific LEGO theme? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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