I like both. Very nice. Great colours too.
Mike

I'm no help because I love both!! But if I have to choose I go with the second one.

My choice would be a random placement for the existing blocks. For a color fade, I'd be making another light red/pink/coral, and remove the darkest blue.

Layout:
Dark red in the upper right, then going diagonal, two mid red, then three lighter red (one new). Then four using the yellow and three oranges. then another row of four, using the four of the lighter green (and the blue/green since the green in that one is light). Next row would be three darker green/turquoise blocks. Then two blue and the purple in the lower left corner.

Another thing that helps with color fade, move from light to dark in the diagonal row, so where you have yellow and three oranges, example would be put the yellow at top, then the lightest orange and the darkest orange at the bottom. The next row, put the lightest green at the top and move down to the darkest green at the bottom.

I prefer the random look.

I like the random one.

I like the random one, with possibly the purple one in the center since it appears that you only have one of those.

I prefer the colour fade, and I like Macybaby's suggestion for how to arrange it.

Whichever way you go, your quilt is going to be lovely!

I prefer the colour fade.

Lovely, any way you look at it.

Watson

Color fade, but either way those two white cornered ones are very distracting.

Oh my, just realized my mistake, I just woke and have had very little sleep in the past 36 hours. The brown is the floor, you weren't trying to make the secondary circle patterning. Ooops, I still prefer the fade, but I seldom prefer complete random or scrappy, my mind always tried for some sort of order.