Do You Understand the Basics?
We live life in technicolor! All around us, every where we go, everything we see is in color. It’s interesting that when “Mother Nature” puts colors together, the outcome is perfect. But often times when people put colors together, the outcome is less than perfect. This could be due to a lack of understanding about color basics.
Most of us has had exposure to a color wheel, and the primary colors. The color wheel was invented by Sir Isaac Newton in 1666, and is probably the easiest way to visualize how different colors relate.
Primary Colors:
The Primary Colors, which are red, yellow and blue, are so named because they cannot be created by a combination of other colors. But it’s amazing how many other colors can be created by combining these 3.
3 .
Secondary Colors:
From the 3 Primary Colors we can create 3 Secondary Colors. We can create orange by combining yellow and red, green by combining yellow and blue, and violet by combining red and blue.
Tertiary Colors:
These are the colors created when combining Primary and Secondary Colors. For example you can create such colors as red-orange, yellow-orange, blue-green and yellow-green.
Understanding the color wheel and how the different colors play off each other helps us to create color schemes that are in harmony. Harmony could be defined as things, whether they are color, sound, food or any number of different items, that when placed together create a pleasing arrangement. Harmony of color, being a visual experience, simply means that it is pleasing to the eye. It creates a sense of balance and order. On the other hand, if the colors are not harmonious, they are either so bland that they are boring and under stimulating, or they are overdone and create a sense of chaos and overstimulation.
The key to creating that perfect color scheme is to understand how to attain the visual harmony that comes from choosing the right colors.
In our next article we will discuss the different strategies for creating harmonious color schemes.
If you are having difficulty making color choices for your home or any other space, give me a call… I am an Interior Color Consultant.
