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12 colors wheel


Twelve Color Wheel

 

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The 12-color wheel | Primary Hues | Secondary Hues | Tertiary Hues | The RYB wheel | So what?

 

Colors can be described in several ways, such as with the classic 'spectrum'. They can also be arranged in a circle (this was first noticed by Isaac Newton). The arrangement can be very helpful when choosing colors for a color scheme.

The 12 color wheel

The 12-color wheel is a common structuring of hues that is based in paint and light and is hence popular with artists as well as photographers. The hues can be arranged in a circle, which is convenient for combinations as described below. The names for hues can vary (as indicated below).

Note that there are a number of other schemes of 12 hues that, although similar are different in various ways. The 12-color wheel shown here is based on classic digital division of hues. There are also a number of different names for the same colors.

Warm and cool

A line can be drawn across the wheel roughly separating those hues which can be considered warmer from those which are cooler. Warmer hues are more dominant as they stand out more, while cool hues tend to recede and be noticed less. Warm is associated with daylight, action, emotion, while cool is associated more with night, calm, reason. In graphic design, this difference can be used for example in separating headlines from sub-text.

Lightness

Lightness of a color is the perceived brightness. Hence, we see yellow as brighter than blue, even though they are both fully saturated. These can be measured and hence sequenced in terms of lightness. This is useful when you want colors to stand out, especially if they may be rendered in grayscale. With constant saturation and lightness, converted to grayscale, luminance is:

 

Color Lightness
Yellow 94%
Cyan 87%
Chartreuse 83%
Spring Green 82%
Green 80%
Magenta 70%
Orange 65%
Rose 60%
Azure 57%
Red 54%
Violet 52%
Blue 44%

Primary hues

The primary hues are Red, Green and Blue (RGB). They are sometimes called the 'electronic colors' as they are used to display hues in electronic devices where RGB dot clusters are used to create all other colors. They are hence referred to as 'additive' hues.

Secondary hues

The secondary hues are Cyan (or Aqua), Magenta (or Fuscia) and Yellow (together known as CMY or, with black, CMYK). They are 'opposites' of RGB and can be created with lights by shining the adjacent primary colors together (hence red light and green light make yellow light).

Secondary hues are sometimes called 'printer's colors' as they are used in printer pigment inks and are combined to create all other colors on printers. They are hence referred to as 'subtractive' hues. Printers also use black (K, to differentiate from Blue) as it is very difficult to mix CMY to get a pure black.

Tertiary hues

Tertiary hues make up the remaining colors in the wheel, with Orange, Chartreuse Green (or just Chartreuse or Yellow Green), Spring Green (or Blue Green), Azure (or Blue Violet), Violet, and Rose (or Red Violet). They are made by mixing adjacent primary and secondary colors.

It is possible to extend the number of hues around the wheel ad infinitum by combining adjacent hues, thereby doubling the total number on each pass through this process.

Red, Yellow and Blue Wheel (RYB)

Artists use subtractive primary hues of Red, Yellow and Blue. A similar 12-color wheel can be constructed using these, as below. Note how this is subtly similar and different to the additive RGB wheel above, though with an expanded Red-Yellow section (and correspondingly reduced Green-Blue section). The secondary hues of Orange, Green and Purple are of course probably quite familiar to most people who grew up using physical paints.

Note that the wheel starts and ends with the same hue (typically, red is used for end-stops when shown as a linear spectrum). This is different to the Newtonian, frequency-based, optical spectrum that starts with red and ends with indigo (as seen in a rainbow).

Use this wheel to help select colors. Remember that you can use desaturated versions of any hue and any combination of hues in between.

See also

The Meaning of Colors, Color Schemes, Lightness, Luminosity, Luminance and Other Tonal Descriptors, Colorfulness, Saturation, Chrominance and Other Ways of Understanding Color

 

Color Basics | Usability.gov

A color wheel is an illustrative model of color hues around a circle.  It shows the relationships between the primary, secondary, and intermediate/ tertiary colors and helps demonstrate color temperature. Digital teams communicate exact colors through the use of hex codes.

Understanding the Color Wheel

Many color wheels are shown using 12 colors.  Using this color wheel as an example, it can be read as follows:

It’s important to note that some people add more intermediates, for 24 total named colors, and some color wheels show interior points and circles, which represent color mixtures.

Color Temperature

The colors on the red side of the wheel are warm; the green side of the wheel has the cooler colors. These color temperature designations are absolute. More subtle color temperature relationships are relative, meaning that each color on the warm side of the wheel can be known as cool, and colors on the cools side of the wheel can be known as warm depending on the relationship to their neighboring color. Colors from the same hue, for instance red, can also be warmer or cooler than one another.

Color temperatures affect us both psychologically and perceptually by helping us determine how objects appear positioned.

Warm Colors Cool Colors

  • Warm colors include red, orange, and yellow, and variations of those three colors.
  • Red and yellow are both primary colors, with orange falling in the middle.
  • Warm colors appear closer to the observer.

  • Cool colors include green, blue, and purple, and variations of those three colors.
  • Blue is the only primary color within the cool spectrum.
  • Greens take on some of the attributes of yellow, and purple takes on some of the attributes of red.
  • They are often more subdued than warm colors.
  • Cool colors appear farther from the observer.

Neutrals

Neutral colors include black, white, gray, tans, and browns. They’re commonly combined with brighter accent colors but they can also be used on their own in designs. The meanings and impressions of neutral colors depend more so upon the colors around them.

Color Models: CMYK vs. RGB

There are two models for colors.  They have different purposes and different attributes.  They are as follows:

Hex Codes

To name colors in web design, teams use hexademal code. All hexadermal codes:

It is easy to identify patterns in the hex codes some colors; see SmashingMagazine’s great chart  at the right for this. Some things to know include:

To find additive colors, start with black and change each pair to ff:

To find subtractive colors, start with white and change each pair to 00:

It is also possible to abbreviate some hex numbers.   For instances #fae expands to #ffaaee and #09b expands to #0099bb.

Additional Resources

Color Wheel and Color Scheme Selection

Introduction

When choosing a color scheme for your home, it can be difficult to match colors. It is rather difficult to imagine how the colors will be combined, and how they will look “live” in combination. Help in the selection of colors, the so-called color wheel, which will be discussed in this article.

Before we return to the world of color, let's talk about the color wheel and its history.

Basic color wheels

Sir Isaac Newton was the first to discover that white included the entire spectrum of colors. This was the creation of the first color wheel in the world. From this experiment, the study of color components and their effect on humans began and continues to this day.

Newton's first color wheel includes 12 colors of the spectrum. They are divided into 3 categories:

Primary colors : red, yellow and blue;

secondary colors : orange (orange), green and violet;

Secondary colors are colors obtained by mixing the primary colors of the spectrum.

Tertiary colors . Tertiary colors include primary and secondary colors.

e.g.

What are color schemes? The color scheme is the most successful combination of colors for interior design and decoration.

Monochromatic colors

If one color of different shades (tones) is used in the decoration of the room, then such a color scheme is called monochromatic.

Analogous colors

A color scheme that uses adjacent colors on the color wheel. The color palette can include from 2 to 6 adjacent colors.

Complementary colors

Complementary or high contrast colors are opposite each other on the color wheel.

Additional mixed (split) colors are isolated separately. These are contrasting color schemes.

Triad color scheme

Triad is a color scheme with three colors. It is the most balanced for interior design. Triads are colors that form an equilateral triangle on the color wheel.

Square and rectangle color scheme

Square and rectangle color schemes stand out separately. In these schemes, one color is bright, and three colors are complementary, faded, highlighting the main bright color.

Color response

All colors can be associated with natural phenomena. Fire, sky, water, earth evoke certain associations and are directly related to the colors of the palette.

Cool colors

Cool colors such as blue, green cause a feeling of coolness, calm the body and mind. These colors and their shades should be used in rooms to calm and relax.

Warm colors

Warm colors such as orange, yellow, red for energy, cheerfulness and activity. They need to be used in rooms where vigorous activity is planned: a kitchen, a children's playroom.

Color wheel of emotions

Everyone knows that colors have a psychological effect on people and individual color selection is important. Therefore, in addition to the color wheel in the selection of color schemes, there is a color wheel of emotions. The wheel of emotions was developed by psychology professor Robert Plutchik. But the photo of the wheel shows what emotions various colors and their shades evoke.

Total

The color wheel is a handy tool for choosing color combinations in the interior and decoration of rooms in the house. They are easy to use and give good results.

Useful services in color matching

http://paletton.com/

Other articles in the section: Color in the interior and Psychology of color

Color and performance. The meaning of color in the interior of the house. DIY color matching

Discover the color wheel or chromatic wheel

La color wheel is also better known as color wheel. This is an image of the primary colors and their mixtures in the form of a wheel. Of course, you have already seen this type of wheel more than once, but this is a topic that originated many centuries ago and can now be presented in different ways.

In the color wheel we see primary colors and their compounds, with opposites that each primary color has. With the help of this color wheel, you can learn to combine those tones that are more aesthetically suitable for each other, thanks to the combinations created. So we can use it in many different ways in decoration and even in fashion.

Index

Circle

This color circle is an orderly representation of primary colors and their derivatives . It is circled and easy to understand and use. The first colored circles presented by artists date back to the 6th century. Since then, different types of wheels have been created, represented by 12, 24 or 24 colors, stepped or graduated, so that we can see the evolution of tones in different tones with mixtures of the main ones.

To easily see this color wheel, we must follow the natural pattern. There are three main colors: red, green and blue. . From their composition, connecting the two of them, another tone arises, opposite to the main tone not used to create the mix. That is, red has cyan as its opposite, green has purple as its opposite, and blue has yellow as its opposite.

Color wheel does not show black and white , since white is the sum of all colors and black is their absence. These are the so-called neutral tones that go with everything. They are as well as gray, which is the sum of the two. Whites would be the opposite of blacks.

From the color wheel you can't get all of the existing ones as there is also mixed with white, black and grayscale . This is the only way to achieve, for example, pastel colors and many nuances in tones coming from the color wheel.

How to match colors

If you are one of those who don't know match colors well When dressing, decorating or doing work, you can use this wheel to have a clear idea of ​​colors that coexist in harmony or create contrasts that are colorful and pleasing to our mind.

Monochrome

They use the same base color as but with different nuances. A single color is used with shades of white or black, thereby achieving its shades. The difference that exists, for example, between bright red and garnet.

Similar colors

Son similar colors in the color wheel . If we trace the same line in a circle, the color next to it will be the same color. In this way, we get similar but changing tones that blend harmoniously and simply with the same color saturation.

Complementary colors

There are opposite colors in the color wheel. That is, the one on the other side of the wheel. Opposites blend beautifully, creating the best contrasts when decorating. To use them in text, they should be avoided as they are cancelled. Red and green, for example, are opposites and can be perfect for embellishment or embellishment, but they can be reversed in texts.

Process colors

There are three colors that select creating the same distance between them . We choose, for example, red, blue and yellow. You can create great contrasts of the three colors.

Use of the color wheel

This color wheel and its simple combinations based on this type of mix will help to match the style and tones to any room. We generally recommend using basic or neutral tones such as white, black or gray as the base of any decor. These colors allow you to add any others and make them stand out.

With the help of the color wheel, we can easily choose combinations and stick to these tones in order to create spaces that are harmonious or have interesting contrasts . In any case, when decorating, it is recommended not to go beyond the three colors that should be the main ones. One tone, which is the main character, and two others, minor ones, are added with small touches. With a color wheel, your choice can be much easier. In this way, we will have a clear idea of ​​​​the tones from which to choose, and we will not make mistakes when buying accessories, textiles or furniture, or even wall paint.

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