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Hopefully those who know the fluff can help me out, I know very little about 40k. I realize there are different craftworlds and they have their own colors, but I often see
different aspects retaining their colors. For example, Fire Dragons are orange/yellow, Striking Scorpions Green...if I play Dawn of War 3, the
elites will retain their colors for the most part and only use a little bit of my army's color scheme as an accent.

So how does that work exactly? Are all Striking Scorpions across the board in green armor? Are Warp Spiders always red/white?

I need to know because Im soon painting a charity Eldar army, but I dont want to get it wrong on the fluff side of things if I choose to paint a
particular craftworld scheme.

Thanks for the help!

You can paint them however you like, typically though the Aspects will retain their signature colours to some degree.

The Eldar Aspects were founded by the Phoenix Lords. Each Pheonix Lord fashioned unique armour and weaponry for themselves. The Aspects try to emulate their Phoenix Lord by wearing the same type and colour of armour. This is why the same colours are seen across all the craftworlds, because every single major aspect shrine was originally founded by the same phoenix lord. The colours are always kept to a certain degree, but lee-way is also available as the colour is simply a sign of emulation.

Each city is different but firemen and policemen where the same colors in every city. Kinda like that!

I play Ulthwe and my Aspects are all painted in the shrine colors but it's a very dark form of that color. Like my scorpions are black based with highlights up to a medium green on the armor edges.

Ah, very helpful responses from everyone.

So going by this, its safe to paint Wraith units/Farseers in the craftworlds scheme and then the Fire Dragons/Scorpions/Banshees/Avengers/Reapers/Warp Spiders in their traditionally seen schemes with accents from the craftworld?

Yep, very much so. That seems to be the official colour scheme.

If you wanna get crazy, paint the wraith units in Iyaanden colors

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
Each city is different but firemen and policemen where the same colors in every city. Kinda like that!

I play Ulthwe and my Aspects are all painted in the shrine colors but it's a very dark form of that color. Like my scorpions are black based with highlights up to a medium green on the armor edges.

although I've seen both yellow and red firetrucks

BrianDavion wrote:

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
Each city is different but firemen and policemen where the same colors in every city. Kinda like that!

I play Ulthwe and my Aspects are all painted in the shrine colors but it's a very dark form of that color. Like my scorpions are black based with highlights up to a medium green on the armor edges.

although I've seen both yellow and red firetrucks

And the red ones had some sort of yellow on them as the red ones yellow I'd wager. Lol

Aspect shrines also sometimes use Craftworld colours, or non-standard Aspect colours, so you're free to do pretty much anything you like with Aspect colour schemes.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Aspect shrines also sometimes use Craftworld colours, or non-standard Aspect colours, so you're free to do pretty much anything you like with Aspect colour schemes.

While that may be true, I prefer the traditional Aspect colors. Why? Because the Path system is supposed to be so powerful it can temporarily break family/clan ties even in such fiercely tribal societies like Saim-hann for the duration of however long that Eldar is on the Path. Therefore by analogy I see the traditional Aspect colors taking precedence over the Craftworld colors, though maybe a nod to the Craftworld might occur in the form of the Craftworld symbol or the sashes being in the Craftworld colors.

While it fits less with fluff, i have a big weakness for craftworld colour aspects (or variants thereof). If they ever release plastic aspects, that'll be my plan

If they ever get to updating the Craftworld Eldar miniatures (seriously, why does one of the primary ranges have to make do with such ancient minis?) then I already have my colour scheme ready (black and yellow as primary colours).
I like the idea of the Aspects all having their own unique armour, but I also think that warriors would somehow want to show their allegiance to their Craftworld or even their specific shrine. Therefore I would likely combine the aspect and craftworld colours. Striking Scorpions would for example have black armour with green accents, green helmets and yellow stripes and details.

To take a more meta view of why the Eldar look like they do I remember reading an interview with Jes Goodwin back when he first formulated the idea of the Eldar as we know them now, and he wanted them to look almost diametrically opposed to the western gritty space knights and WW1 soldiers of the Imperium. So, he went with a vibrant splash of heraldic colour with strong far-eastern influences. Part of that vibrant splash of colour was the Aspect Warriors with their wildly different colour schemes creating an army that was a riot of colour. Completely different from the uniformity of human armies.