1. Basic Color Wheel Chart:
Artist's
Color Wheel
The Artist Color Wheel (a.k.a. "Color Mixing Wheel") is the color mixing chart we learn at school.
Developed by painters for painters, it's all about mixing paint colors from 3 primary colors.
Illustrated with loads of online color wheel pictures, the color mixing wheel is a good place to start exploring color theory. (You can also download color wheel pictures here).
Printable
Color Wheel
Teaching/Learning Resource:
Download 10 free Printable Color Wheel templates for use in your classroom/studies. Choose from ...
2. "Design" Color Wheel Chart
4-Primary
Color Wheel
If you're looking for an online color wheel that is not about mixing primary colors, try Ewald Hering's 4-Primary Color Wheel.
This color wheel chart is much more useful as a design color wheel because
Basic Color Wheel
On the other hand, the 'interior decorating' color wheel you can buy in paint supply stores is usually just a Basic Color Wheel for mixing colors.
It's a painters' color wheel rather than a design color wheel: It shows how to mix paint colors, not how to combine them successfully.
However, it does explain useful basic color terms like 'hue', 'tint', 'shade', 'tone', 'monochromatic', 'analogous', 'complementary', 'triadic', and so on.
3. Basic Color Theory:
Illustrated
Color Terms
Knowing Basic Color Theory is extremely valuable, no matter whether you're designing a room color scheme or 'just' wrapping a present.
Here's an illustrated list of 15 useful color terms.
Knowing them will help you identify ...
Color Wheel:
Complementary
Colors
Where are the Complementary Colors on the color wheel chart? What can you do with them? And what do split complementary colors look like?
Oh, and why is 'complementary' the correct spelling?
This article has answers to all of the above, plus
Warm/Cool Color
While it is true that 'warm' colors belong to the yellow/red section of the color wheel chart and 'cool' colors to the green/blue section, there is much more to Warm And Cool Colors than this. Here's a 'secret key' to amazing color schemes for
Primary Colors
3 Primary Colors are sufficient for mixing all paint colors (at least in theory). So they make a good starting point for a paint color mixing chart - but are they sufficient for other jobs as well?
Not if you work in the paint industry, or design contemporary logos.
So how many primary colors do we actually need?

Monochromatic
Color Schemes
'Monochromatic' Color Schemes come in degrees:
They can vary from extremely purist combinations (one hue plus the non-colors black & white) to almost analogous color schemes (say, a variety of bluish greens and greenish blues).
The article takes one room through several monochromatic color schemes - see how it works!
The color wheel chart you can buy in the shops today is really a color mixing wheel - that's why it is often referred to as the 'artist color wheel'.
As a color model, it shows how - in theory - you can mix absolutely any color from an initial set of three 'primary' colors.
The three basic, primary colors are yellow, red, and blue.
If you mix all three primary colors in equal parts, you'll get a neutral color, usually a murky gray (it depends on the pigments you use).
When you mix any two primary colors,
you get the secondary colors:
This leaves each primary color with a complementary color (mixed from the other two primaries). The complementary pairs are:
Each pair complement (='complete') each other to produce a neutral color.
In other words:
a) you mix two primary colors into a secondary (orange, purple, or green),
b) then you add the third primary color (which wasn't in the first mix) ...
and your three primaries reunite before your eyes to the old murky gray.
On the 'third' level, we now mix primary with secondary colors, all the way round the color wheel chart (this is where the fun really starts!)
These mixtures are sometimes called 'tertiary' colors, but the term is not used in the same way everywhere.
Here's what you get:
When you align the 3 primary colors with the secondary and 'tertiary' colors around the outer ring of the color wheel chart, the complementary pairs always sit directly opposite each other on the ring.

Another Take On The Color Wheel Chart:
Just for the heck of it, here's another illustration of the mixing process that makes up this color mixing wheel. The black arrows indicate which paint color goes into each mix:
Click A Pic For More Info!
Take-Home Thoughts For Decorators
1 A color wheel chart is about how we see or mix colors. It is not a model of how colors should be combined. So don't sweat it - there's no such thing as a 'correct' color scheme!
2 A simple color wheel chart has limited value as a model of 'real-life' color:
Here's a selection of commercial color wheel charts from Amazon:
For color scheme inspiration, check out some
of these books:
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