I have no experience with your climate, but there used to be a real clematis enthusiast who posted here and was an inspiration to many of us prior to his untimely death. Miguel AKA nckvilledudes lived in NC, zone 7a, and though he tried a wide variety of clematis, he often commented that the ones that grew best for him were the ones that were type 3 prune plants - the heat and humidity were hard on the type 1 and 2 pruning plants. I did a regular websearch for "nckvilledudes clematis site:forums.gardenweb.com" and the link below has the results. I didn't reread all of them, but you'd probably benefit from his wisdom about growing clematis in your climate.

nckvilledude's comments

I'd definitely second having a look at nckvilledude's comments, as I know I found a lot of useful information in them for growing clematis in my hotter and more humid zone. Also, it seems that some of his photos did survive the transfer from GardenWeb to Houzz, so I am sure you could find some inspiration in those. Here are a couple of old threads that you might find particularly useful: suggestions for a z8 coastal garden?

question about type 2 clematis in NC

Here are a couple of Miguel's posts with more photos:

today's blooms

a few more open up

I have found the type 3 pruning group to be best for my climate (hot and humid long growing season with very little real winter cold), and the viticella group to be the best of those. The viticellas are often referred to as small flowered, but their flowers aren't too small in my opinion. I also like the simplicity of hard pruning all of my clematis - no worries about what parts stay and what parts get pruned. If I prune again (usually by half) after blooming, I can get three bloom cycles in my garden per year. If I am lazy about summer pruning, many will still produce a second bloom cycle for me in the fall anyway (although the vines will be much longer then).

Some of my best performers and favorite clematis are Black Prince, Little Bas, Pendragon, Etoile Violette, The Prince, Emilia Plater, Little Nell, Walenburg, Galore, Betty Corning, Venosa Violacea, Madame Julia Correvon, Huldine, Mienie Belle, Duchesse of Albany, Zoin, and Minister (this latter I purchased based on Brushwood's praise for "health and vigor", and while technically a type 2 pruning group, I treat it as a type 3).

If you like to buy books to inspire your gardening choices, I can highly recommend John Howell's book "Trouble Free Clematis The Viticellas". It can be purchased used on Amazon, but it is now more costly than when I purchased my copy some years ago.
Trouble Free Clematis The Viticellas While a couple of Amazon reviewers have posted negative reviews for blurry photos, I can only say that my copy has only a few photos which are not as sharply defined. Since it was printed in the late 90s, it doesn't have the super sharp digital images of today's new gardening books, but the photos are by and large still quite good. This book goes in to great detail about the viticella hybrids, and it has a short section on the recommended varieties in the other clematis groups. For each viticella entry in the main section, there are 4 - 6 photos which show a close up photo of a flower, a photo of a group of flowers, a close up of the leaves and sometimes a photo of an opening bud or the backside of a flower. Another feature that I like about this book is that the author has about 10 photos showing similarly colored flowers side by side so one can see the color nuances. An example would be a photo containing a flower of Blue Angel, Kasmu, Emilia Plater and Prince Charles. Another compares one flower each from Cosmic Melody, Kermesina, Royal Velours, Madame Julia Correvan, Ville de Lyon and Sodertalje. Some of these photos only have two flowers, such as one containing Tango and Minuet. This book also talks about the care of clematis, different types of supports, and it has photos of clematis combinations and even a couple of bouquets containing clematis.