A Primary Color Wheel ...

... that's 3 primary colors, right?  Well, not necessarily.  The four- primary color wheel can help you mix primary colors into very interesting, 'eye candy' color schemes.

On this page:  What Are The Primary Colors? / 3-Primary Color Mixing Wheel / 4-Primary Color Wheel Template / Complementary And 'Opposing' Colors / Triadic Color Schemes / Tetradic Color Schemes

What Are The Primary Colors?

The answer depends on who you ask.

Ask a painter, and you'll likely hear:

• yellow,
• red,
• blue.

These three colors make up the core of the 3-primary color mixing wheel and are considered to be the basis for mixing all other colors (that's not counting the 'non-colors', black and white).

Ask a stranger in the street, "What are the primary colors?" - and they'll either look bewildered (unless it's a painter), or they might say: yellow, red, blue, and green.

Do they have a point?

Imagine, for a moment, what the Google® logo would look like without the green. Would you find it looks 'complete'?

On the other hand, how do we know that green really is a primary color? And would a four-primary color wheel show how to mix primary colors correctly? Let's check all this out.

(Return to Top)

3-Primary Color Mixing Wheel

The current 3-primary color wheel goes back to J.W. von Goethe (1749-1832), even though the idea of 3 primary colors is older than Goethe's work.

In Goethe's model, the 3 primary colors are the paint colors you can't produce by mixing, but which can mix all other colors. These primaries are to painting what the prime numbers are to mathematics: you just can't divide them any further into smaller (whole) numbers.

So in theory, red, yellow and blue should produce all other colors. I say "in theory" because in reality, the 3 primary colors rarely (if ever) produce luminous, clear secondary colors:

Instead, some red-plus-blues come out as lifeless, flat grey-purples, and some blue-plus-yellows end up as really murky greenish-browns.

The result of mixing primary colors depends entirely on how the pigments work together.

And even if the pigment mix does work, the secondary colors hardly ever show the same luminosity as the primary colors that went into the mix.

So, clearly, the artist's color mixing wheel does not always demonstrate how real paints/pigments mix.

Oh, well. At least, the 3-primary color wheel explains how the world of paint color hangs together, so it is a useful tool. (Click the link to read more about complementary, secondary and tertiary colors on the three-primary color mixing wheel.)

Now let's see if the four-primary color wheel is equally useful.

(Return to Top)

4-Primary Color Template

The four-primary color chart is not about mixing primary colors as paints, it is about how our eyes and brains work. That's a different approach from the 3-primary color mixing wheel. Physiologist Ewald Hering (1834-1918) called red, yellow, blue and green the "psychological primaries".

He pointed to Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who had already identified these colors as the basic set of 'simple' colors. (Both men added black and white to their primary color charts.)

Hering argued (and was proven right, half a century after his death) that we physically see these primary colors as opposing pairs (he did not call them 'complementaries'):

Accordingly, the color arrangement on Hering's color wheel shows how ...

Now, have a look at the secondary colors (the triangles) that you get from mixing the primary colors blue and yellow with green. Both of them (lime green and turquoise) would be tertiary colors on the three-primary color wheel.

By now you're probably asking, "What does all this mean for my interior decorating project?" - Well, here's the crunch:

Conventional color schemes (complementary, split-complementary, triadic, and so on) look quite different when we base them on a four-primary color wheel chart. Let's have a closer look at this:

(Return to Top)

"Complementary" Colors

Complementary colors are defined as two hues on opposite sides of a color wheel chart which will mix into a near-neutral gray if you mix them 1:1.

On the 3-primary color wheel, this works a treat. But not when you use the four-primary model:

See how the yellow-purple complementary contrast (left) shows up as a yellow-blue pairing (right) on the four-primary color wheel template? Blue and yellow, however, are not complementary colors;

On the other hand, just have a look and check out all the opposing colors on Hering's 4-primary color wheel. Even if you can't find true complementary colors (except for the red/green pairing), you'll turn up some lovely "eye candy" combinations!  How about, for example ...

Next, let's see how both primary color templates compare when we use a triadic color scheme:

(Return to Top)

Triadic Color Schemes

Hmmm. The triadic color scheme works well on a primary color wheel with 3 primary colors, but not with four. The corners of an equilateral triangle can't even "find" a proper color combination - simply because sixteen color swatches don't divide by 3.

By the same token, sixteen color swatches are perfect for a ...

... Tetradic Color Scheme.

Tetradic color schemes are a natural fit for the four-primary color template, and they actually lead to more harmonious, usable color combinations than they do on the 3-primary color mixing wheel:

Fine, you'll say, but where does all this leave us? Is one primary color wheel "better" than the other?

Not at all.

At the end of the day, each of the primary color wheel templates is simply the result of a different question.

Another conclusion we can draw is that you really, really don't need to worry about visits from the color mixing wheel police when you're decorating your home.

Sure, the 3-primary color wheel is what you'll get in the shops when you ask for a color wheel template. It is based on the deeply entrenched dogma that there are only 3 primary colors. But that dogma is now hundreds of years old, and it does not represent the 'truth' about color. It's just a convention.

I say, forget conventions, relax, and go for the eye candy.

Yet to find the information you're looking for? Type a word or phrase into the search box below: