Color Wheel Chart Made Easy

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 ...

• Two color mixing wheel (= artist color wheel) print-outs,
• A 4-primary color wheel chart (Ewald Hering),
• Color wheel pictures that demonstrate hue, tint, shade & tone, as well as
• Blank color mixing charts & wheel templates.

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

• it's about the way we see color;
• it shows how warm & cool colors really work;
• it has a rather gorgeous set of 'opposing' colors that make lovely decorating color schemes.

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 ...

• How a color might fit into a color scheme, and
• How to manipulate color schemes so they look great.

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

• Complete sets of complementary & split-complementary color swatches, as well as
• 4 complementary (and complimentary ;-) room color scheme ideas.

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

• interiors,
• design projects, and
• crafts!

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!

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The 3-Primary Color Wheel Chart
(a.k.a. Artist Color Wheel / Color Mixing Wheel)

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.

a) 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).

b) Secondary Colors / Complementary Pairs

When you mix any two primary colors, you get the secondary colors:

• yellow and blue produce green,
• blue and red produce purple,
• red and yellow produce orange.

This leaves each primary color with a complementary color (mixed from the other two primaries). The complementary pairs are:

• blue/orange,
• red/green, and
• yellow/purple.

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.

c) "Tertiary" Colors

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:

• blue (primary) + green (secondary) = turquoise
• blue (primary) + purple (secondary) = blue-violet
• red (primary) + purple (secondary) = red-violet or crimson
• red (primary) + orange (secondary) = red-orange
• yellow (primary) + orange (secondary) = yellow-orange
• yellow (primary) + green (secondary) = lime green

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:

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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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