Some good principles to bear in mind when designing beaded necklaces

Of course, this is such a huge topic, with perhaps more different styles of necklace out there than any other item of jewellery. If you would like to see just some of this variety, please look at the Necklace Styles article in the Expand Your Horizons series, part of our online course.

However, we can still give you some advice on basic fundamentals which  apply to most necklace styles, in terms of design.

First and foremost, probably, is using colour to allow each bead to stand out in relief to its neighbours(example, top left) So complementary colours need to be chosen, in a variety of shapes and sizes, before you start. In other words, the single most important thing to do is to get a palette of beads together of related colours and tones, perhaps two, three, or more colours,but ones that work well together as a group, of course. In some cases you could have half a dozen colours together, such as pastel shades like lemon, aquamarine, lilac, rose,  and grass green. If you would like to find out more about this, see the related article, Colour Combinations in Beads(via article 20, Helping you Choose)

Beyond colour, there are other structural considerations. Typically, for strung styles, such as ropes,thongs  and floaters, and for chain link styles, you can go two ways. Either keep all the beads roughly the same size all the way around. Or, more traditionally, taper the design so that the beads gradually get larger until they reach the centre, as in graduated pearls or crystal necklaces. Staying traditional for a moment, the classic thing to do then is to alternate colours, and in mirror image out from the centre. There is another type of classic design, where there is simply a fixed number of repeating sequences all the way around, usually consisting of about 5 different beads.

However, rules are made to be broken , and to give an exciting contemporary edge, think about random segments of beads, with no repeats or mirroring. This works best with a wide palette of beads of related colour, such as sapphire, lliac  and amethyst, or multi colours such as pastels,as above or naturals,such as tan,chocolate, charcoal, and ivory.

For styles involving pendants and chain, surprisingly, the same rules can still apply, namely that the necklace is longer at the centre and tapering out to shorter pendants, so still the same idea of the necklace becoming lighter as you mover from the centre, in the shape of an inverted triangle(left, 2nd from top). However, as above, you can either get traditional and have hpendants in mirror image out from the centre,  or shake things up by a more random arrangement, simliar to charm style bracelets, see the related article.

There are other shapes that work well for pendant necklace styles, such as Y-chains-left, middle image(see the relevant article in the Expand Your Horizons article series.) Also of course, sometimes simple is best. When using large strking beads such as Venetian Glass lozenges, making a simple pendant, and then hanging it onto an elegant modern chain like snake chain can be extremely effective. Or you can add "tails" for another effective style.(bottom left)

We hope this has given you some ideas you may not have had before. For more information, on how to master the techniques for these different styles, see the relevant articles.