Most people own more than one print and wear them one at a time, in separate outfits, forever. The reason is not taste. It is that nobody ever gave them a rule they could actually hold in their head while getting dressed. So the safe move wins, and the second print stays in the drawer.
Mixing prints is not a talent. It is three decisions, made in order. Get those right and two patterns in one outfit reads as considered rather than chaotic. Get them wrong and you get the thing everyone is quietly afraid of, which is looking busy.
Here is the method, and then how it applies to our own prints, which were drawn to be mixed.
Rule one: change the scale
This is the decision that does most of the work. Two prints of a similar size fight each other, because the eye cannot decide which one to read first. Two prints of clearly different sizes settle into a hierarchy on their own.
Big and small is the pairing to reach for. A large flowing pattern with a small repeating one will almost always work, even when the colours are not an obvious match, because your eye reads the large print as the picture and the small print as the texture.
Medium and medium is the pairing to avoid. If you hold both pieces up and neither one is obviously the louder of the two, put one back.
A quick test that costs nothing: lay both pieces on the bed, walk to the door and look back. From across the room, one should read as the pattern and the other should nearly read as a solid. If they both still shout, the scales are too close.
Shop the large-scale print: Copacabana Laranja Wide-Leg Pajama Pants — $89
Rule two: keep one colour running through both
Scale creates the hierarchy. Colour creates the connection. You need one hue that appears in both prints, and it does not have to be the dominant one in either.
A rust that is the main colour in one print and a thin outline in the other is enough. The shared colour is what tells the viewer this was on purpose. Without it, two prints in the same outfit look like two prints that happened to be clean on the same day.
You do not need matching colours. You need one repeated colour. Those are different things, and the second one is far easier to achieve.
Shop the small-scale print: Women's Selarón Print Short Pajama Set — $79
Rule three: let one print lead, roughly seventy thirty
Give one print about seventy percent of the outfit and the other about thirty. Wide-leg printed pants with a small printed top. A printed dress with a printed hat. A big print on the bottom half with a small print peeking out at the neckline.
Fifty-fifty is where outfits go wrong. Two equally sized, equally loud halves have no lead and no support, and the eye bounces between them without landing. Pick a star.
If you are nervous, start with a ninety-ten split. A single small printed accessory against one bold printed piece is technically print mixing, and it is nearly impossible to get wrong.
Neutrals are a bridge, not a cop-out
There is a persistent idea that adding a plain piece means you chickened out. It does not. A solid piece between two prints gives the eye somewhere to rest, and rest is what stops a busy outfit from feeling loud.
A cream tee between printed pants and a printed layer. Bare skin at the neckline. A sand or stone tone somewhere in the middle of the outfit. These are structural, not timid.
This also applies to backgrounds. If you are dressing for photographs, the sand, the wall or the sofa is effectively a third pattern. Busy background plus two busy prints is the actual failure mode most people are worried about, and it is a location problem more often than a clothing one.
Shop a neutral piece: Women's Copacabana Short-Sleeve Pajama Set – Dune — $89
How our two prints are built to mix
We draw everything in house in Atlanta, and there are two families to know.
Copacabana Wave is the large one. Long ribboning waves that run the length of a garment, in colourways from Laranja rust and Shocking Pink through to the soft neutral Dune and Sand. On a pair of wide-leg pants a single wave can travel from hip to ankle. This print is designed to lead.
Selaron is the small one. It takes its name from the mosaic staircase in Rio and behaves like mosaic does, small tiled squares, suns and zigzags in teal, blue, white and orange, repeating tightly across the fabric. From across a room it reads almost as texture. This print is designed to support.
That is a deliberate pairing. One large, one small, with warm oranges running through both. The three rules above are already satisfied before you have chosen a single garment, which is the whole point of drawing your own prints rather than buying them in.
Large scale meets small scale
The easiest mix there is: one print, two colourways
If two different prints still feels like a step too far, there is a shortcut that looks more adventurous than it is. Take the same print in two different colourways and put them in one outfit, or across two people standing next to each other.
Copacabana Wave in Laranja next to Copacabana Wave in Dune. The shapes agree, so nothing clashes. The colours differ, so it does not read as a uniform. It is the lowest-risk print mix available and it is the one we reach for most in family photographs.
Shop the same print, two ways: Copacabana Laranja Matching Set – Tank & Wide-Leg Pants — $90
One print, two colourways
Mixing prints across a family
Everything above changes slightly when the outfit is spread across four people, because now the group is the outfit and each person is a piece of it.
The seventy thirty rule becomes a headcount. In a group of four, two people carry the large print, one carries the small print, one wears a neutral. In a group of five, three, one and one. You are aiming for a clear majority, not an even split.
Give the loudest print to the person who is happiest being looked at, and the neutral to whoever is least comfortable in front of a camera. This sounds like a personality note rather than a styling one, but it is the difference between a photo everyone likes and a photo one person quietly hates.
Cut is the other lever. Same print, different garment shape, and the group stops looking like a team kit. A dress on one person, a tee on another, pants on a third. Identical outfits in a line are the thing people mean when they say matching family outfits look forced.
Shop the kids print: Kids Selarón Print Short-Sleeve Dress — $49
Where people actually go wrong
Two prints, two totally unrelated colour families. A cool blue-green mosaic with a warm terracotta wave and nothing shared between them. Add a bridging neutral or change one piece.
Both prints the same size. Covered above, and it is the most common mistake by a distance.
Print on top of a busy background. Two prints in front of a patterned rug or a crowded beach will always look worse than the same two prints against a plain wall or open sand.
Stiff fabric. A print sits differently depending on what it is printed on. A pattern on fabric that holds its own shape looks rigid and costume-like. The same pattern on something that moves reads as relaxed. This is why the mix often fails on paper and works in person, or the reverse.
Adding a third print. Two is a choice. Three is a project. If you want a third pattern, make it something tiny and low-contrast that nobody will name as a print.
Four combinations that work
Weekend at home. Wide-leg Copacabana Wave pants in Laranja as the lead, a plain cream tee as the bridge, bare feet. Ninety-ten, effortless, and nothing to think about.
Beach to lunch. A Selaron mosaic bikini top under an open neutral kaftan, with the small print doing the work and the loose layer keeping it calm.
Evening in. A large-scale wave pajama set on the bottom half, a small print or solid on top, and one warm colour repeated between the two.
Family photograph. Two adults in Copacabana Wave in two colourways, one child in the Selaron mosaic, one in a plain warm neutral. One print family, two scales, four people, no uniform.
Shop the beach layer: Women's Copacabana Kaftan – Dune — $89
The short version
Different sizes. One shared colour. One print in charge. A neutral wherever the eye needs a break. Two prints maximum.
That is the whole method. Everything else is preference, and preference is the part you should not outsource to a rule.
Two prints, drawn to go together
Copacabana Wave and Selaron are both original in-house prints, made to order in two to four days, in sizes XS to XXL.
Copacabana Laranja Wide-Leg Pajama Pants$89
Women's Selarón Print Short Pajama Set$79
Copacabana Wave Print Pajama Pants – Dune$89
Free shipping · 30-day returns · Made to order in 2–4 days · XS–XXL
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