BattleTech Faction Colour Schemes: Painting Your House, Clan or Mercenary Command

Canonical colour schemes give your force identity and connect your miniatures to the factions they fight for. Below are the established schemes for all five Great Houses, ten Clans, and three of the best-known mercenary commands, with practical notes on how to achieve each one.

The Great Houses

House Davion — Federated Suns 🎨 Try this scheme

Canonical colours: Brown or tan primary, with red and gold accents. Individual units vary significantly — the Davion Guards use red and gold, the Crucis Lancers use green, the Kestrel Grenadiers use dark blue.

Approach: Desert tan (Vallejo Tan or Army Painter Desert Yellow) with red trim. Brown wash. Gold or white unit markings. Produces a weathered, campaign-worn look appropriate for FedSuns forces.

House Steiner — Lyran Commonwealth 🎨 Try this scheme

Canonical colours: Blue-grey or light grey, often with blue trim. The Lyran Guards traditionally use grey with blue highlights.

Approach: Vallejo Cold Grey or Army Painter Uniform Grey base. Blue-black wash. Light grey drybrush highlights. Blue trim on shoulder pads and weapon housings. Clean and military.

House Kurita — Draconis Combine 🎨 Try this scheme

Canonical colours: Dark red or maroon primary. White or gold accents. The Sword of Light regiment uses bright red with white trim.

Approach: Army Painter Warzone Red or Vallejo Gory Red base. Dark brown or black wash. Orange-red drybrush highlights for the Sword of Light look. White geometric unit markings. High contrast and striking.

House Liao — Capellan Confederation 🎨 Try this scheme

Canonical colours: Dark green primary with red or white accents. Green and black is the most common combination.

Approach: Army Painter Greenskin or Vallejo Dark Green base. Black wash. Lighter green drybrush highlights. Red trim accents. The dark wash makes green look rich rather than toy-like.

House Marik — Free Worlds League 🎨 Try this scheme

Canonical colours: Purple primary with gold trim. Individual units vary — the Silver Hawks use silver, the Marik Militia use purple-grey.

Approach: Vallejo Hexed Lichen or similar mid-purple base. Dark purple wash. Gold edge highlights on prominent panels. More complex to execute than the other Houses but very distinctive on the table.

The Clans

Clan Jade Falcon 🎨 Try this scheme

Forest green with jade or light green accents. Black or dark green secondary. Often bold geometric patterns.

Clan Wolf 🎨 Try this scheme

Grey primary with dark red or rust accents. Unit markings tend to be angular and bold.

Clan Ghost Bear 🎨 Try this scheme

White or bone primary with dark grey or brown secondary. The Ghost Bear totem imagery appears on many unit markings.

Clan Smoke Jaguar 🎨 Try this scheme

Black primary with orange or red-orange spots/accents mimicking jaguar markings. High contrast, striking on the table.

Clan Nova Cat 🎨 Try this scheme

Dark blue or black with gold or yellow accents. Often features stylised cat eyes in unit markings.

Clan Diamond Shark 🎨 Try this scheme

A mix of greens and blues, echoing the Clan's shark totem. Individual Keshiks and fleet units add their own variation, but blue-green stays the throughline across the touman. Known as Clan Sea Fox before 2985 and again from 3100 onward, if you're painting a specific era, check which name applies.

Clan Coyote 🎨 Try this scheme

Varying shades of black, blue and grey. A scientist Clan first, and the scheme reads more utilitarian than showy, closer to a working uniform than a parade colour.

Clan Hell's Horses 🎨 Try this scheme

Reds and blacks across most galaxies, matching the same palette their warriors wear on their dress uniforms. Individual Galaxies vary the exact balance, but red-and-black is the identity to start from.

Clan Steel Viper 🎨 Try this scheme

Steel grey as the base, with dark green snakeskin patterning across large panels. Alpha Galaxy in particular adds a bold steel-grey and blood-red striped scheme on top of the base identity.

Clan Star Adder 🎨 Try this scheme

Black and deep blue. Understated next to Smoke Jaguar or Steel Viper, but consistent across the touman, with the Clan's totem insignia placed on the left arm and right leg of 'Mechs.

Mercenary Commands

Unlike House or Clan units, mercenary commands aren't bound to a single canon scheme in every case, but a handful are famous enough that "generic mercenary grey" would be the wrong answer.

Wolf's Dragoons

Canonical colours: Red, gold or black are the favoured hues for 'Mechs, under a black snarling wolf's head insignia on a red field. Regiments vary further: Alpha runs rust-red trimmed in black, Beta solid emerald green, Gamma midnight blue, Delta dusty grey, Epsilon tan, and the Wolf Spider Battalion black with blood-red trim.

Approach: Pick a regiment rather than "the Dragoons" generically — Alpha's rust-red is the most recognisable, and the wolf's-head insignia is what actually reads as Dragoons at gaming distance.

Kell Hounds

Canonical colours: Black and red, with no single fixed layout specified, but most published art settles on a red torso with black limbs and occasional red accents on the arms and legs.

Approach: Dark grey primer, black base on the limbs, red on the torso panels. Simple, high-contrast, and one of the easiest iconic schemes on this page to actually paint.

Northwind Highlanders

Canonical colours: No single uniform scheme — each command paints to its own tradition. What ties them together is the tartan: most units display the Clan Stuart tartan (or, historically, their own regimental tartan) prominently on the torso, with sub-units otherwise ranging from tan-and-forest-green to flat green to primer grey.

Approach: The tartan patch is not optional if you want the unit to read as Highlanders. Paint the base colour of your choice, then don't skip the small tartan swatch on the torso.

Practical Painting Notes

These canonical schemes are starting points, not laws. Many players use them as a basis and personalise — darker tones for a veteran unit, weathering for a campaign-worn force, bright accents for an elite regiment. The canon gives you context; your painting gives the 'Mechs character.

For any scheme involving multiple colours, paint the lighter colour first and add darker trim over it rather than the reverse. It's easier to paint a dark line over a light base than to paint a neat light line over dark paint.

Unit insignia and numbers don't need to be hand-painted. Decal sheets are available for most major BattleTech factions and apply with water — a significant time saver that produces cleaner results than brush work on small surfaces.

Inventing Your Own Scheme

Mercenary units in BattleTech have no canonical colours, which is an invitation to create your own. Some guidelines that help original schemes look intentional:

• Pick a primary colour that takes 60–70% of the surface area
• Add a secondary colour for trim and accents (20–30%)
• Use a third colour sparingly for cockpits and details (10% or less)
• Keep the palette to three colours maximum — more looks muddled at gaming distance

A wash ties everything together and makes colours look more natural. The scheme that seems simple on paper often looks better than the complex one when they're both on the table.

Frequently Asked Questions