Once you understand these relationships you begin to see how well certain colors pair with each other.

It’s not as simple as just MATCHING the same colors with each other.

It gets tricky because there are combinations that are automatically pleasing to the eye and some that really clash.

Some people may find this article boring, but it’s always the simple things that hold the most power when executed correctly.

A lot of people have the “knowledge” but they don’t implement any of it.

For some of you this may just be a refresher.

So here are the basics of the color wheel…


There are three PRIMARY colors – BLUE, RED, and YELLOW.

Adding lightness and darkness to these primary colors forms all other colors.

Adding any of these two PRIMARY colors together gives you a SECONDARY color.

Primary + Primary = Secondary

Example:

Blue + Yellow = Green

Yellow + Red = Orange

Red + Blue = Violet

Then adding measures of light or dark to these colors creates different shades of color as well.

A TERTIARY color is when you mix a SECONDARY color with it’s adjacent PRIMARY color.

Examples:

Green + Blue or Yellow = Blue-Green or Yellow-Green

Orange + Red or Yellow = Red-Orange or Yellow-Orange

Violet + Blue and Red = Blue-Violet and Red-Violet

With this in mind, adjusting amounts of primary colors combined with level of lightness or darkness can create any color in the universe.

PRIMARY and SECONDARY colors that are side-by-side on the color wheel are ANALOGOUS to each other.

Blue’s Analogous = Green and Violet

Orange’s Analogous = Red and Yellow