• Welcome to the Speedsolving.com, home of the web's largest puzzle community!
    You are currently viewing our forum as a guest which gives you limited access to join discussions and access our other features.

    Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community of 40,000+ people from around the world today!

    If you are already a member, simply login to hide this message and begin participating in the community!

The Custom Color Scheme Thread - Share and Discuss Your Schemes Here!

Cuberstache

Member
Joined
May 7, 2018
Messages
1,042
Location
Washington State, USA
WCA
2016DAVI02
YouTube
Visit Channel
That looks like the squan scheme. How do you like having black opposite white?
It is the squan scheme, so far I'm not used to it yet. I'm color neutral so it'll be harder than normal. I think it'll be good though.
Those are beautiful. Although you wouldn’t need to buy seven cubes each time, you would only need two, one stickered and one stickerless
It could be for multiBLD, that way you get the most out of the black cube
^^This^^
I've done MBLD up to 19 cubes so I don't mind buying several good 3x3s.
 

EngiNerdBrian

Premium Member
Joined
Jun 21, 2018
Messages
960
Location
Denver
YouTube
Visit Channel
Anybody use black INSTEAD of white and keep yellow? Years ago I used this scheme. In retrospect black/white contrast makes more visual sense but I liked the black/yellow look, haven’t done it to any of my modern cubes though since stickers aren’t as easy to mix and match as they used to be due to the shapes of edges nowadays.
 

OreKehStrah

Member
Joined
May 24, 2019
Messages
1,435
YouTube
Visit Channel
Anybody use black INSTEAD of white and keep yellow? Years ago I used this scheme. In retrospect black/white contrast makes more visual sense but I liked the black/yellow look, haven’t done it to any of my modern cubes though since stickers aren’t as easy to mix and match as they used to be due to the shapes of edges nowadays.
I used it for a little bit. I liked how obvious it made cross pieces. I eventually just switched back to the normal scheme at some point when I started using stickerless cubes a few years ago to be more cost effective.
 

Sub1Hour

Member
Joined
Jun 4, 2018
Messages
1,873
Location
Utah
WCA
2018BECK05
YouTube
Visit Channel
Anybody use black INSTEAD of white and keep yellow? Years ago I used this scheme. In retrospect black/white contrast makes more visual sense but I liked the black/yellow look, haven’t done it to any of my modern cubes though since stickers aren’t as easy to mix and match as they used to be due to the shapes of edges nowadays.
It was popular for square-1 back in the day when the first magnetic volts were rolling out but then people started to prefer black on white compared to yellow on black since the purpose of having black on any puzzle is for maximum contrast, which is also why I have black as my first layer color on mega, so why pair it with something that won't contrast as well as white?
 

EngiNerdBrian

Premium Member
Joined
Jun 21, 2018
Messages
960
Location
Denver
YouTube
Visit Channel
I used it for a little bit. I liked how obvious it made cross pieces.
Exactly. I originally did it for the purposes of cross...or maybe to match my V-Cubes since they were all the rage at the time.

why pair it with something that won't contrast as well as white?
Yeah i think i'll give a white/black scheme a try this week, just makes more logical sense from the point of maximizing contrast.

I made this cube with a bunch of extra cubesmith shades a while back...pink instead of orange, purple instead of yellow and just an odd palette of shades. I didn't like it.
1591722744937.png
 

Q--

Member
Joined
May 10, 2020
Messages
63
Location
I'm not sure either
WCA
2019MCGA02
Anybody use black INSTEAD of white and keep yellow? Years ago I used this scheme. In retrospect black/white contrast makes more visual sense but I liked the black/yellow look, haven’t done it to any of my modern cubes though since stickers aren’t as easy to mix and match as they used to be due to the shapes of edges nowadays.
That is Kit's scheme, I judged him a couple of times.
 

xyzzy

Member
Joined
Dec 24, 2015
Messages
2,877
When I was restickering my Spark, I tried doing a solve with what was meant to be the blue (iirc) side unstickered, effectively replacing blue with black, and my recognition was just garbage. Then again, my recog is also pretty bad even in its fully stickered state, which is partly why I'm still maining my (stickerless) Wuji. I'm sort of, maybe thinking of getting a stickerless Spark to make a stickerless-black cube, just to mess with the idea.
 

ProStar

Member
Joined
Oct 27, 2019
Messages
6,253
Location
An uncolonized sector of the planet Mars
WCA
2020MAHO01
SS Competition Results
I was going to let Kit explain his own scheme, but since others have tried (and failed) to describe it already, here it is: mirrored Japanese with black instead of white (so black/blue, red/orange, yellow/green)

mirrored Japanese color scheme with black I think
 

EngiNerdBrian

Premium Member
Joined
Jun 21, 2018
Messages
960
Location
Denver
YouTube
Visit Channel
It was popular for square-1 back in the day when the first magnetic volts were rolling out but then people started to prefer black on white compared to yellow on black since the purpose of having black on any puzzle is for maximum contrast, which is also why I have black as my first layer color on mega, so why pair it with something that won't contrast as well as white?
I finally made a black instead of yellow cube today and am trying to collect my thoughts on black+yellow vs black+white. If the purpose of black is to have maximum contrast i am still not seeing the point of having the contrast of black against green, red, blue, and orange since black on white is not really useful; when are we searching for and eliminating yellow vs white layer pieces? What gain does black against white contrast provide? This seems to benefit only the last layer where recognition is the easiest.

Alternatively with black instead of white i find the cross and F2L recognition much more obvious because black sticks out like a sore thumb. This seems more beneficial since you get 2 layers of enhanced recognition instead of just 1.

Perhaps for the color neutral folks in the crowd bl;ack+white makes more sense because they are not always using the same cross color (white) so the recognition of black/white is more important. I'll give black against white some more time...maybe its my old habits of black against yellow are just dying hard.

Thoughts?
 

Sub1Hour

Member
Joined
Jun 4, 2018
Messages
1,873
Location
Utah
WCA
2018BECK05
YouTube
Visit Channel
I finally made a black instead of yellow cube today and am trying to collect my thoughts on black+yellow vs black+white. If the purpose of black is to have maximum contrast i am still not seeing the point of having the contrast of black against green, red, blue, and orange since black on white is not really useful; when are we searching for and eliminating yellow vs white layer pieces? What gain does black against white contrast provide? This seems to benefit only the last layer where recognition is the easiest.

Alternatively with black instead of white i find the cross and F2L recognition much more obvious because black sticks out like a sore thumb. This seems more beneficial since you get 2 layers of enhanced recognition instead of just 1.

Perhaps for the color neutral folks in the crowd bl;ack+white makes more sense because they are not always using the same cross color (white) so the recognition of black/white is more important. I'll give black against white some more time...maybe its my old habits of black against yellow are just dying hard.

Thoughts?
I think that in general, if you are going to make your color scheme different for recognition reasons you might as well replace the least contrasting color with the most contrasting color. In bad lighting or when I'm turning fast, yellow can blend in with green and/or white. Having black and white makes more sense to me on nxn puzzles since they contrast with any other color extremely well, but on megaminx I replaced white with black since having that tan color looks way too similar to white. Now if that tan was closer to yellow, then I would switch black with white, and then black with yellow. Square-1 is different from other nxns since the U and D faces are the only ones that share colors, so having more contrast with that just helps a little bit with "tuning out" the D layer pieces. With nxn puzzles, its a good choice to use black since it has by far the most contrast out of any other color you could pick, maybe aside from white.

Overall, if you are going to change colors, make the most out of it.
 

EngiNerdBrian

Premium Member
Joined
Jun 21, 2018
Messages
960
Location
Denver
YouTube
Visit Channel
I think that in general, if you are going to make your color scheme different for recognition reasons you might as well replace the least contrasting color with the most contrasting color. In bad lighting or when I'm turning fast, yellow can blend in with green and/or white. Having black and white makes more sense to me on nxn puzzles since they contrast with any other color extremely well, but on megaminx I replaced white with black since having that tan color looks way too similar to white. Now if that tan was closer to yellow, then I would switch black with white, and then black with yellow. Square-1 is different from other nxns since the U and D faces are the only ones that share colors, so having more contrast with that just helps a little bit with "tuning out" the D layer pieces. With nxn puzzles, its a good choice to use black since it has by far the most contrast out of any other color you could pick, maybe aside from white.

Overall, if you are going to change colors, make the most out of it.
Well said, I suppose outside my internal black+white or black+yellow battle I’m a bit obsessed with how opposite face colors look with each other; those preferences are all about contrast in retrospect.

I can see now how black and white is very beneficial for square-1 now. I still kinda prefer black cross with yellow top but that might just be because I did it for a few years back around 2008-2009 when V-cubes had the black instead of white as the standard option.

Regardless, having a black face on stickerless cubes sure looks good though!
 

OreKehStrah

Member
Joined
May 24, 2019
Messages
1,435
YouTube
Visit Channel
I finally made a black instead of yellow cube today and am trying to collect my thoughts on black+yellow vs black+white. If the purpose of black is to have maximum contrast i am still not seeing the point of having the contrast of black against green, red, blue, and orange since black on white is not really useful; when are we searching for and eliminating yellow vs white layer pieces? What gain does black against white contrast provide? This seems to benefit only the last layer where recognition is the easiest.

Alternatively with black instead of white i find the cross and F2L recognition much more obvious because black sticks out like a sore thumb. This seems more beneficial since you get 2 layers of enhanced recognition instead of just 1.

Perhaps for the color neutral folks in the crowd bl;ack+white makes more sense because they are not always using the same cross color (white) so the recognition of black/white is more important. I'll give black against white some more time...maybe its my old habits of black against yellow are just dying hard.

Thoughts?
Part of the main appeal of using black opposite white for me is that it frees up yellow. I had a thought that yellow is such a striking and obvious color that we use it for important traffic signs and caution tapes, so why not use the super easy to spot color for F2L since I usually solve white or op crosses.
I found the contrast between red and yellow to be way higher than again orange, and after seeing red op yellow side by side with red op orange, it really makes you go, “ wow, how did nobody say that is terrible for contrast.”
Another reason I like black on the last layer is it makes it easier to focus on F2L. Because F2L is only colored pieces, you can immediately ignore any piece with black on it. I k ow that sounds rediculous as far as making a difference goes, but I really do think it helps recognition at a subconscious level because your brain can focus on only the colored F2L pieces instead of seeing a mess of white corners and a mess of 5 other colors. This idea is further supported by the fact that a lot of blind solvers users have cubes with black instead of yellow just because it is more striking and quicker to recognize against the sea of color on a scrambled cube.
Black last layer also makes recognizing some advanced last layer or last slot cases quicker to recognize with confidence at a glance. It is very hard to mistake black for any other color when you catch it from a weird side view or are turning very quickly. I find it can help mentally track pieces while solving.
Finally, I have a sneaking suspicion that it might help me learn ZBLL down the line. That probably sounds strange at face value so let me explain. I personally believe that what will become the best way to recognize ZBLL is to treat it like recognizing a 3D PLL instead doing stuff like recognizing CP case, looking for unique patterns, and going through a kind of checklist of things to check like to recognize the case. What I mean by recognize 3D PLL is that we are so used to tunneling into the sides of the cube and ignoring the top during PLL since it’s all one color, so for ZBLL I think it would be better to be able to retrain the brain to recognize from maybe a three sided recognition system using the front, the side, and the top layers. Because this has to retrain your brain, switching to black helps add an unmistakable color that could help speed up recognition. I haven’t tested this idea too much since I don’t know just a lot of ZBLL currently but I’m convinced there’s probably a better way to handle it than what we do now.
 

PizzaCuber

Member
Joined
Apr 8, 2020
Messages
103
Location
Under ur moms couch
Has anyone thought of doing inverted colors of every normal shade? Like the white would be black, blue would be orange, green would be red, and so on?

now that I think about it that’s stupid because your just swapping colors lol.
 

EngiNerdBrian

Premium Member
Joined
Jun 21, 2018
Messages
960
Location
Denver
YouTube
Visit Channel
Another reason I like black on the last layer is it makes it easier to focus on F2L. Because F2L is only colored pieces, you can immediately ignore any piece with black on it. I k ow that sounds rediculous as far as making a difference goes, but I really do think it helps recognition at a subconscious level because your brain can focus on only the colored F2L pieces instead of seeing a mess of white corners and a mess of 5 other colors.
not ridiculous at all. This concept is the exact reason why I thought black last layer would be useful. Oddly enough my brain seems to be FOCUSING on the black instead of ignoring it. That may change with time though since I may just be focusing on something NEW (black) and am not able to reap the benefits yet.
 
Top