Traditional patterns are mostly symmetrical. This is seen especially in the arrangements of floral and animal patterns, which are most common. Some patterns appear in identical pairs or mirror images. Such balanced patterns won wide acceptance.

The superimposing of components is avoided. Even in a repetitive design, each component appears in full, perhaps in a radial manner around a central figure. In folk paintings, a fish breaking the surface of the water is shown not as half in the water and half in the air but as exposing its complete body to the air.

Patterns do not have volume and perspective representation is often ignored. This is because the depiction of real figures and backgrounds has little importance, while two-dimensional depiction is emphasized. As the superposing of figures is avoided, something in the distance is often depicted as being above the main object in the foreground.

Another common characteristic in composition is its unrealistic sense of coloring. No matter what the original color of objects, they are always shown in one of the five cardinal colors: blue, yellow, black, white, and red. In East Asian cosmology, these correspond to the five elements: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. This color usage was almost always found in Korean traditional patterns.

Korean patterns are usually simpler than Chinese or Japanese patterns. This was not due to the lack of skill of Korean craftsmen, but because elaborate and superficial representations were deemed vulgar. In this way, Korean artists focused on expressing the essential core properties of their subject-matter which went beyond the depiction of appearances. Beauty in simplicity was their motto.