The early fifties palette in UK ceramics included black, light grey, blue-green (teal), and burgundy. Blue-green is a frequent colour of hollow-ware in fifties Midwinter and Poole. Fresh pastel shades were also popular in the fifties and early sixties ('pastel' just means any pale shade of a colour). Various mixtures of early fifties and pastel colours are seen in two-tone combinations in the Poole twintone range, and in some harmony pieces by Wade; all can be seen also in Gaydon melmex plastic tea sets.

Bright red, golden yellow, black and pastel blue were used as colours for the interiors of vases. Red is also used in trims and banding on tableware from the early fifties onwards (e.g. Midwinter domino). Note that red is nearly always overglaze, and therefore prone to wear and flaking, but not to crazing.

Some pieces were all-black (e.g. Hornsea's black figures by Marion Campbell; black-hand fauna novelty dishes from the same factory; some of Jessie Tait's early vases and candleholders for Midwinter's Modern range; and the 1950s black panther glaze of Poole) or black with contrasting colours and/or white stripes (e.g. the wonderful elegance range designed by John Clappison for Hornsea). Black is also a common colour for fifties hollow-ware (as in Ridgway homemaker and barbecue, and Foley domino).

In the early sixties, things got toned down a bit; subdued, earthy greens, browns and subtle oranges came in. Sandy tones worked beautifully on the black-and-honey imprest range from Hornsea. The autumnal colours of Queensberry from Midwinter are also typical of the period.

Hippy culture had two influences on UK ceramics in the sixties. One was towards very bright (psychedelic and flower-power) palettes; the other was toward 'ethnic' and oriental patterns with rich Victorian browns and purples.

Brown is not the most attractive colour for ceramics, although warm terracotta browns can look very nice (as in Hornsea Sienna). However, Victorian-style greeny-browns (and hideous olive-greens) were popular in the late sixties and early seventies. Why did people like them? The ceramics look like they have been smeared with algae from stagnant ponds, or with sewage. Just such a drab and gloomy colour scheme was unfortunately used by Beswick on the otherwise attractive Zorba body shape, designed by Graham Tongue in 1968 and in production from 1970-73.

Space age colour palettes, from the late sixties onwards, used black, white and strong primary colours (the latter also picking up on the psychedelic theme). Poole Delphis and Carlton Ware show these trends. Bright orange was very common in the sixties and seventies.

The 1980s, when modernism was replaced by postmodernism, saw ceramics with rounded shapes, beige bodies and pastel shades of blue, yellow and pink. Pastels bodies were seen in the 80s strata range by Hornsea.