"subdued colours" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
You can use it to describe an array of colors, particularly those that are more muted and less vibrant. For example, "The nursery was decorated with soft, subdued colours to create a calm atmosphere for the baby."
Such a map, therefore, has a topographic background printed in subdued colours on which the geologic or soil patterns are overprinted in prominent colours.
Morris' designs for the medium, which first appeared in 1862, were characterized by flat, stylized, naturalistic patterns and rich, subdued colours.
London's public buildings were tinged with grime, cars were a uniform black and people in the streets wore subdued colours and looked shabby.
But again there was more to it, the clean lines and subdued colours bearing their own message of modern practicality allied with postwar moral responsibility.
A Family was a crucial point in Le Brocquy's work as a painter chiefly because it introduced a new phase of activity involving painting in subdued colours: 1951-54, a grey period, then a white period following a sponsored visit to Spain.
Using rich, subdued colours, Vuillard produced paintings characterized by harmonious composition and exquisite form.
The 60 rooms are bright and light-filled thanks to tall ceilings and windows, and a subdued colour palette of cream and beige.
The film, made in a non-realist, lyrical style using subdued colour, not only portrayed a tender love story but raised a polemical voice on the ambiguity of Polish behaviour during the war.
Lassally used subdued colour for Tom Jones (1963), a lively swinging 60s version of Henry Fielding's picaresque 18th-century classic novel that deployed a barrage of visual tricks: Tom's childhood is narrated in the style of a silent film, and there is use of slow and accelerated motion and the freeze frame, all mixed with delicately photographed rustic settings.
Chenghua overglaze colours were thin, subdued in colour, and pictorial in effect.
Much more subdued in colouring, the chestnut-sided shrike-vireo (V. melitophrys) is greenish brown above and white below, with a gray head and both black and yellow stripes running through the eye.
