A Color Wheel Relationship Guide

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A Color Wheel is a Scheming Tool

A color wheel, sometimes referred to as a color circle, is an organization of twelve color hues in a circle and a basic to color design because it demonstrates how the different hues visually relate to each other.

If you are not really comfortable with color (or even if you are) it can be a handy tool for choosing the perfect color for your home interior.

The color wheel is made up of three primary colors, three secondary colors and six intermediates created by mixing a primary with a secondary and known as tertiary colors giving us the twelve hue divisions.

Primary Colors

Its amazing when you think about it that all colors are built upon three fundamental colors or hues called primary colors.

These primary colors of red, blue, and yellow exist alone and are not created by the mixing of any other color. They are often referred to as the true colors for that reason and are equal distance apart on the color circle.

Secondary Colors

The colors created when you combine two primary colors with each other are called secondary colors resulting in orange, green and violet.

Tertiary (Intermediate) Colors

When you combine each secondary with it's neighboring primary you get six intermediate colors called tertiaries, which make up the twelve divisions of the color wheel.

The tertiary colors are red-orange, red-violet, and yellow-orange yellow-green, blue-violet and blue-green.

Every color has a temperature that is either warm or cool. Warm colors are from the red and yellow side of the wheel while the cool colors are on the blue and green side.

When selecting a color palette for your home, looking at the relationship of these colors and where they fall on the color wheel can help you tremendously.

Here are some of the main color schemes to keep in mind.

Welcome to our family

A monochromatic color scheme is using any shade, tone or tint in one color family. For example pink, berry and burgundy are all in the red family.

Being neighborly

Using colors that lie adjacent to each other on the wheel work well together and create an analogous color scheme.

Paying a compliment

For each color on the wheel there is a natural compliment color that lies directly opposite.

Combining a shade, tint or tone of these two opposite colors together creates a complimentary color scheme. Orange is the compliment of blue.

Warm colors have a cool compliment and the cool colors have warm compliments.

The complimentary color scheme can be split, by choosing a color (blue) and using color on each side of its compliment. (Yellow-orange and red-orange)

Triad

A decorating color scheme using three colors that are equally spaced from each other on the wheel.

For example, using the primary colors together in one decorating scheme, or all of the secondary colors together in one room, you would be creating a triad color scheme.

It may be more challenging to work, but would be a balanced outcome.

Achromatic

Another color scheme that is relatively easy to work and to live with for your home decorating is a colorless one.

This neutral color scheme using blacks, whites, browns and grays are called achromatic.

So how do you choose?

You still may be asking yourself: How do I choose the right color for me?

Think about what certain colors mean to you and finding inspiration.

Look in your closet. What color do you wear a lot? Do you have a favorite scarf, painting, or vase that you love? What about the beautiful colors of a sun set?

You get the idea.

Find your inspiration and then use the color wheel to find colors that relate to it but most of all just take your time.

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