Basic Color Wheel Chart
Aristotle started it in the Western world; Newton put a word in (quite a few words, actually), and the poet Goethe came up with a worthy system as well, among many others. But something tells me that you haven’t come here for the low-down on scientific color research. You probably want a system to make choosing color schemes easier. First, the bad news: There isn’t one color wheel chart, there are many. And people have been disagreeing over them for hundreds of years. Now, the good news: I’ll only cover two of them. You’ll see why two and not just one. And I’ll make it short (promise!)
 The most widely used basic color wheel (developed mainly by painters from the 18th century onward) starts with three primary colors: yellow, red, and blue. These three are taken as the starting point for mixing all other colors. Together they produce a neutral color, usually a murky gray (it depends on the pigments you use).  When you mix the primary colors of this basic color wheel with one another, you get the secondary colors: yellow and blue produce green, blue and red produce purple, red and yellow produce orange.That leaves each primary color with a complementary color (mixed from the other two primaries). Blue/orange, red/green, and yellow/purple are complementary colors. The complementary colors sit directly opposite each other on the color wheel chart. Each pair complement (= ‘complete’) each other to produce a neutral color. Mix two complementary colors, and you’ll get the old murky gray.
 Ewald Hering, a German physiologist and no relation of mine, came up with this four-color primary model in 1878. His system is very close to the way the human eye actually sees color, and it is so influential in the color/paint industries today that I’m presenting it here.You see that green has now joined the primary colors in the basic color wheel. Now what? I say, let’s make it even more complicated:
 Almost everyone perceives some colors as ‘warm’ and others as ‘cool’. Generally, the ‘warm’ ones are seen as related to the yellow/orange side of the color wheel chart, and the ‘cool’ ones to the blue/green side (independently of the set of primary colors you root for). However, it has also long been argued that there are ‘cool’ yellows and even ‘warm’ blues. Have a look at the graphic to the right and judge for yourself: Is one panel of colors ‘warmer’ than the other? (I do hope the colors come out well on your computer screen – it’s always a bit of a gamble!).
The different basic color wheel charts are nice for learning about color ... ... but they obviously don’t give us hard and fast rules for using it. There are two ways you can utilize a basic color wheel chart of your choice:
However, most basic color wheel charts contain only saturated colors - none of the subtle hues that come from mixing colors with ‘neutrals’, and none of the lighter tints and darker shades that make home decorating so interesting.
The usefulness of a basic color wheel chart is limited. How we perceive color depends on many things the color wheel doesn’t 'mention':
Return from Color Wheel Chart to Decorating Color Schemes Made Easy Return to from Color Wheel Chart to Dream Home Decorating Homepage
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Look at a basic color wheel chart to find out how colors relate to each other, which ones might work together and which ones probably won’t. But use it with caution...
Obviously, the fun really starts when you go on mixing primaries and secondaries. This gives you all the fabulous hues around the color wheel, from greenish blues to yellowish greens.
The surface. Glossy paint can make a light color look lighter and a dark color appear darker. Linen, wool and silk give deeper, more complex hues of a color than cotton and most synthetics.
