If you’ve been watching House of the Dragon, you’ve probably noticed something by now: the show is absolutely obsessed with color. And not in a subtle, artsy way that you’re supposed to pick up on subconsciously. No, the creators of this series have weaponized color in a way that makes every frame tell a story before anyone even opens their mouth. The greens and blacks aren’t just faction names—they’re a visual language that’s as important to understanding the Targaryen civil war as any dialogue or plot point. It’s the kind of storytelling detail that separates a good show from a truly great one, and House of the Dragon deserves credit for leaning so hard into this visual approach.
Let’s talk about what makes this color symbolism so brilliant. In a show about a family tearing itself apart over a throne, the production designers could have chosen to differentiate the two sides through simple costume changes or set dressing. That would have been fine. But instead, they created an entire visual ecosystem where green and black don’t just represent different factions—they represent entire philosophies, moral positions, and emotional states. Every time you see a character bathed in green light or dressed in deep blacks, you’re getting a coded message about whose side they’re on and what values they represent.
The Power of Costume Design
The costume work in House of the Dragon is absolutely stellar, and the way the show uses color through wardrobe choices is a masterclass in visual storytelling. The Greens don’t just happen to wear green—they’re dressed in increasingly ornate, deliberately constructed outfits that emphasize wealth, structure, and political calculation. Alicent’s gowns are architectural in their precision. They’re layered, buttoned, controlled, and as the series progresses, they become more elaborate and more oppressive. There’s something about the way her costumes are constructed that mirrors the psychological imprisonment of her position. She’s trapped by duty, by her father, by her own ambitions, and the costumes reflect that. By the time we reach the later episodes, she’s practically encased in green fabric and gold, looking less like a queen and more like a gilded cage in human form.
The Blacks, by contrast, dress in something that feels more organic and fluid. Rhaenyra’s costumes, while still opulent and queenly, have a certain grace to them that the Green designs lack. There’s movement in them, a sense of freedom even when she’s weighed down by the burdens of leadership. The black leather, the flowing fabrics, the way these outfits are constructed—they all suggest a different relationship with power. The Blacks are asserting their right to rule, but there’s a confidence there that doesn’t require the same level of reinforcement through costume that the Greens need. This is subtle, brilliant costume design that works on multiple levels.
Even the secondary characters get the color treatment, and it’s never random. When we see a lord wearing green or black, we immediately understand their allegiance without needing it explained to us. The costume department has created a visual system so intuitive that viewers can actually see the political landscape shifting through what people are wearing. It’s environmental storytelling at its finest, and it rewards attentive viewers while remaining accessible to casual ones.
The Architecture of Emotion Through Lighting
If costumes are the vocabulary of this color language, then lighting is the grammar. The cinematography in House of the Dragon uses green and black lighting to create emotional landscapes that shape how we perceive every scene. When we’re in a Green stronghold, the lighting often has an almost sickly quality to it—not always, but often enough that you notice. There’s a pallor to scenes set in King’s Landing that makes even moments of celebration feel slightly off, slightly wrong. The greens are often muted, sometimes almost poisonous-looking, which is fitting given that we’re literally watching characters poison one another, figuratively and sometimes literally.
The most striking example of this is how the show uses green light to undermine moments that should be powerful or joyful. A celebration becomes sinister when bathed in certain shades of green. A coronation feels slightly corrupt. Even family moments in the Red Keep have this underlying visual dread to them. The cinematography isn’t trying to hide that these people are doing terrible things and justifying them with family obligation. The lighting is literally showing you the moral corruption of their choices.
Meanwhile, scenes involving the Black faction often have warmer tones, more natural light, more vibrant colors. When we visit Dragonstone, there’s fire, there’s grey stone, there’s the sea. It’s a more dynamic visual palette. This doesn’t necessarily mean the Blacks are good—the show is far too intelligent to suggest that the civil war has clear moral categories—but it does create a visual distinction that makes the two sides feel genuinely different, not just like rival teams wearing different uniforms.
The lighting also serves a psychological function. Rhaenyra’s descent into darkness is mirrored by how the show increasingly shoots her in shadows and cooler tones. The visual language doesn’t lie about her emotional journey. When she’s grieving Lucerys, when she’s becoming harder and colder and more willing to commit atrocities in the name of war, the lighting reflects that. The cinematography is always in conversation with the character arcs, always providing visual subtext that enriches the storytelling.
Color as Political Language
What makes the green versus black color scheme so effective is that it does work on both a symbolic and practical level. Symbolically, green often represents growth, life, and fertility in human culture—and yet here it represents stagnation, control, and corruption. Black traditionally suggests darkness and evil, and yet the Black faction contains some of the show’s most sympathetic characters. This inversion is deliberate and meaningful. The show is telling us not to trust our instincts about what these colors mean. It’s forcing us to watch actual characters and actual events rather than falling back on visual shorthand.
The political houses and their banners also play into this color system. When houses pledge to green or black, there’s often a visual representation of that allegiance. Lords who side with Alicent start wearing more green in their clothing, their armor, their castle decorations. It becomes a mark of political identity that’s visible from across the room. This creates a visual map of the political landscape that’s constantly shifting. As houses switch sides—and several do—the visual representation of power is literally recolored before our eyes.
The throne room itself becomes a battleground for these colors. Early in the series, the Red Keep’s interiors are relatively neutral. But as the conflict intensifies, green and black become increasingly present in every scene set there. It’s as if the Green faction’s control over King’s Landing has actually tinted the entire physical space green. The colors seep out from the throne room and into every corridor, every chamber. This is filmmaking as architecture, where the visual palette itself becomes a character in the story.
The Subtlety of Secondary Colors and Accents
What’s particularly clever about House of the Dragon’s color work is that the show doesn’t just rely on primary greens and blacks. The production designers use a whole spectrum of secondary colors to add layers of meaning and nuance. Gold appears constantly, often associated with wealth, power, and the Targaryen legacy. Gold isn’t green or black—it’s something older and more fundamental. Golds and golds harking back to the days when House Targaryen unified the Seven Kingdoms under a single rule.
Red also plays a crucial role, particularly at significant moments. The Red Keep is red. Blood is red. The throne room throne is red. Red becomes associated with consequence, with the terrible costs of political ambition, with the reality that the pretty colors of house loyalty are ultimately about flesh and blood. Some of the most visually striking moments in the show occur when reds and blacks or reds and greens clash—literally clashing in the frame, creating visual discord that reflects the moral discord of the moment.
Silver, bronze, and other metallics add texture and complexity to the visual language as well. The metalwork in Green spaces tends to be ornate gold. The metalwork in Black spaces has more variety and character. These are small details, but they accumulate into a comprehensive visual statement about the nature of each faction.
The Psychology of Living in Color
There’s also something deeply unsettling about how the show uses color to suggest the psychological cost of supporting one side or the other. Characters who are trapped in the Green faction are increasingly surrounded by green. It becomes almost claustrophobic. Meanwhile, characters who are struggling to maintain their position in the conflict are often shown in transitional spaces—neither fully green nor black, which creates a visual representation of their internal conflict.
Alicent’s journey is visually tracked through her relationship with green color. Early on, she wears greens by choice, as an expression of her identity and ambition. But as the series progresses, green becomes less like a choice and more like a trap. The greens get heavier, more oppressive, more deliberately chosen by circumstances rather than Alicent herself. By the time the civil war begins, she’s practically entombed in green, and you can see it on her face. The color that once seemed powerful now seems like a prison, and the show communicates this entirely through visual language.
Similarly, Rhaenyra’s relationship with black is shown through how the show dresses her and lights her. She’s not just wearing black—she’s increasingly defined by it, shaped by it, almost consumed by it. Her grief is expressed through the show choosing to shoot her in darker, more shadowy scenes. Her anger and hardness become visible through how the black clothing is used. The visual language is subtle enough that you don’t consciously notice it, but it shapes your emotional understanding of her journey completely.
Conclusion: A Living, Breathing Visual Vocabulary
What makes House of the Dragon’s use of color and symbolism so remarkable is that it’s never heavy-handed or pretentious. The show doesn’t stop to explain why the color choices matter. It just makes them, trusts the audience to absorb them, and builds an entire visual language that rivals the dialogue in importance. You could watch House of the Dragon with the sound off and still understand a tremendous amount about the political and emotional landscape of every scene based purely on color, lighting, and costume.
This is what separates great television from merely competent television. It’s the difference between showing and telling. House of the Dragon shows you the corruption, the power dynamics, the emotional journeys, and the moral complexity of the civil war through every color choice, every lighting decision, every fabric texture. Green and black aren’t just faction names—they’re a visual argument about the nature of power, loyalty, and the terrible cost of civil war. And that’s why, months after watching an episode, viewers are still talking about how the show makes you feel about the factions before you even consciously realize that color has been doing the emotional heavy lifting. That’s remarkable filmmaking, and it deserves to be celebrated as such.
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