Hey sapphire, both sets of fabric are beautiful and either will work. However, if you are trying to go for the "glowing" of the braid then there are some things here I would recommend.
#1. The green/teal ones while beautiful fabrics are not the same tonal family and will not make the braid glow.
#2. The purple ones do in a sense make a glowing braid, they are from the same tonal family and do range through the values. However, that one with the white dots does not fit the run. I would take that one out completely.
Your eyes should flow from one color to the next with a smooth transition. You should feel like your eyes are flowing from one side to the other without jarring. That purple with the white dots jars your eyes, they "stop" when traveling.
Now you do not have to go out and buy more fabric. Just go with a 5 fabric run. You will have a slightly shorter runner since you now have 5 fabrics. Which is perfectly ok. It is pretty long anyhow. Fat quarters are more than enough, you can easily make the runner much longer by doing 3 runs of 5 fabrics rather than 2 runs. Still enough fabric. A queen sized french braid with 12in wide braids only use 1/2yd of fabric per color. So trust me, 1/4 yd of fabric for table runner will leave you tons of extra.
***Side note: Forgot to add this above, but if you use Insul-Brite for the batting
you now have a multi-function table runner. It can work as a hot plate as well. Only caveat here is that if you do embroidery for the center you will not want to set hot pans on it. Rayon or Poly threads used in embroidery are not good with hot pans. Also be sure you use all cotton threads and fabrics if you are going to use it as a hot pad.
Now I will state here Sapphire and I discussed this at length in chat. And I did ask first if she wanted my honest opinion so I promise that I am not picking on her in a mean way. I asked her to post here so that I could answer over here and help everyone select their braid colors based on MY method.
Please remember that these are your table runners, if you want to have crazy different prints each braid, that is your choice and I applaud that!
If however you want the glow of fabric that I have up there in my sample photos, then my comments above are how I do it. I will happily review anyones colors and give my honest opinion, but please tell me if you want honest opinion
Otherwise I will just assume that the colors you select are the ones YOU want for your runner. I get nervous giving my opinion, cause many people get a little touchy with criticism, even constructive kinds.