Colour Definitions
How are colours classified? What is a saturated colour? Here is
an explanation of the chromatic circle and definitions of colour
terms such as you have never had before!
Primary colours: Primary colours - red , yellow
and blue - may not be created by mixing other colours. On the
contrary, they are mixed with one another to produce other colours.
In printing and plastic arts, magenta (a pinkish red), yellow and
cyan (a blue) are used as primary colours because they are better
suited to mixing, and yield better balanced secondary colours. A
mixture of the three primary colours produces black.
Secondary colours:
They result from the mixing of two of the primary colours. Red
(magenta) and yellow produce orange, yellow and blue (cyan) produce
green while red and blue (cyan) produce violet.
Intermediate
colours: Mixing a primary and a secondary colour produces
an intermediate colour such as orange-yellow.
Complementary
colours: Colours that are opposite one another in the
chromatic circle are called complementary.For example, green
(resulting from the mixing of the primary colours yellow and blue
[cyan]) is complementary to red. Orange (a mixture of yellow and
red [magenta]) is complementary to blue, while violet (a mixture of
blue [cyan] and red [magenta] is complementary to yellow.
Warm colours:
Colours ranging between yellow to red-violet on the circle i.e.
yellow, orange-yellow, red and red-violet.
However, interaction between colours may cause a hue such as
red-violet to appear warmer if it is placed next to a cold colour,
such as green, or colder if it is placed next to a warm colour,
such as orange.
Cold colours: Colours ranging between blue-violet
and yellow-green on the chromatic circle i.e. blue-violet, blue,
blue-green, green, yellow-green.
However, interaction between
colours may cause a hue such as yellow-green to appear colder if it
is placed next to a warm colour, such as red, or warmer if it is
placed next to a cold colour, such as blue.
Pale or clear colours: Hues containing more or less white.
Dark colours: Hues containing more or less
black.
Saturated or bright
colours: Pure hues containing, theoretically, no white,
black, gray or complementary colours. However, this definition can
be stretched to extend the range of complementary colours. For
example, the range of saturated blues is not limited to pure blues.
Blues containing white or black may still be considered saturated.
On the other hand, orange containing black, even in small
quantities, is considered unsaturated because it becomes
brownish.
Unsaturated or gray-tinted
colours: Hues containing more or less gray, or of their
complementary colour. Theoreticians also use the expression "dull
colours" to designate those colours. The expression does not carry
a derogatory meaning.
Harmony: In
decoration, harmony refers to a combination of colours that is
pleasing to the eye.
Hue: It is the quality that distinguishes one
colour from another. It is, for example, what differentiates blue
from yellow.
Value: It refers to the position of a hue
relative to the vertical gray scale. Value allows to qualify hues
as pale or dark, or light and dark.
Chroma
(saturation): It describes the horizontal spread between a
hue of the same scale value as neutral gray. Chroma allows us to
describe a colour as saturated or unsaturated, or as bright or
grayt inted. Adding gray makes the hue less saturated or more
unsaturated. A hue can also be modified with the addition of some
of its complementary colour.