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Color is a powerful visual force. It could make your web or print page more appealing, attract attention and clarify your message.
Whether you’re or a small business marketer who publishes content on your website, or design your own offline marketing collateral such as business proposals and documents; or a secretary who prepares Powerpoint slides or a report for your manager … harness the power of color precisely to communicate effectively and professionally.
Visual studies have proven that color attract more attention than pages without. Unlike print design, color on the monitor is free. But use it wisely. Because color creates more than visual perception. It can evoke moods and symbolically signify meaning.
The Color Wheel is a tool for understanding which colors go with what, helping you find the right ones for your design—web or print.
The Color Wheel
Wherever there’s light, there’s color. White light contains all visible colors, which form an infinite spectrum that appears in the red-to-violent sequence, like the rainbow. The color wheel represents this infinite spectrum with 12 basic hues.
Hues
These 12 hues consist of primary, secondary and tertiary colors. The three primary colors of blue, yellow and red combine to make secondary colors; which combine to make tertiary colors.
Constructed in an orderly progression, the color wheel is the range of visible light—represented by the 12 basic hues—formed into circle. It enables the user to visualize the sequence of color balance and harmony. The 12 basic hues are: Red, Red Orange, Orange, Yellow Orange, Yellow, Yellow Green, Green, Blue Green, Blue, Blue Violet, Violet, Red Violet.
Color Value
Each hue is at a level of full saturation, or brightness. There is no black or white added. When the relative amount of white or black is added to a hue, the color has lightness and darkness, called value. To show value, the color wheel has more rings: two outter for dark shades and two inner for light tints.
Color Schemes
No color stands alone. A color is always seen in the context of other colors. In fact, the effect of a color is determined by the light reflected from it, the colors that surround it; or the perspective of the person looking at it.
No one color is “good” or “bad”. Rather, it’s one part of a composition that as a whole is pleasing or not.
There are six basic color schemes.
Monochromatic: This palette has the dark, medium and light values of a single color. It has no color depth, but it provides the contrast of dark, medium and light that’s important to good design.
Analogous: These are adjacent colors. They share strong undertones which create pleasing, low-contrast harmony. Analogous palettes are rich and always easy to work with.
Complement: These are colors directly opposite of each other on the color wheel. Complementary colors are contrasting, convey energy, vigor and excitement.
Split Complement: These are colors one step either way of the complement’s own analogous colors. It’s strength is in the low-contrast beauty of analogous colors, plus the added accent of an opposite color.
Primary: The primary colors are often seen in children’s products.
Secondary: Secondary colors have a lot in common so they harmonize easily.
The 4-Step Process to Find the Perfect Colors
Color not only adds impact and dimension, it contributes significantly to the legibility, helps organization, evokes the feeling and personality of a web page or print page.
Here are the 4-step process to find the perfect colors for your design:
- Step 1: Clearly define the results you want to achieve with color.
- Step 2: Select a main, key color that reflects the needs of the project.
- Step 3: Select a color scheme based on the key color (hue).
- Step 4: Experiment and refine the scheme’s color choices in terms of the project requirements.
The Color Wheel is an indispensible tool for anyone who wants to communicate effectively, whether you’re a secretary who prepares Powerpoint slides or a report for your manager; or a small business marketer who publishes content on your website or sales page, to your offline marketing collateral such as business proposals and documents.
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24 comments ↓
Great article. Your writing is great. I love color. it is my favorite element of design by far. My color theory class was my favorite in college. I hope you sell a ton of color wheels!
Dugg it and added you to my technorati faves.
-mommy zabs
Thanks Zabs for your kind words!
Well, I’m giving the color wheel away! So grab it NOW before I change my mind. ;p
Sherman
Nice article! Just signed up for your pdf.
Cheers
Thank you SEO London!
I love you work on your portfolio page.
Sherman
Great work on the Color Wheel. I have a copy of it on my desk for easy reference and use it with every design I work on. It has assisted greatly in choosing colors that work well together for maximum visibility and effect. Thank you for the efforts that you’ve put into developing a reference that is so useful.
Hi Butch,
Yes, the color wheel is indeed a very useful reference tool—for designers and non-designers alike.
I’ve a mini version, a desktop icon that sits on my Mac desktop. Whenever I wanted a quick reference, I activate the Expose to put all windows away, exposing the desktop and I see that mini color wheel.
Sherman
Thank you so much for this helpful and useful color wheel. I made it a necessity for all my designers to have it posted next to their screen somehow.
Hi Jeff,
I’m flattered. Thanks!
Sherman
As a painter I’m in love with color. I especially enjoy using compliment colors against one another to create “snap.”
You have top be careful not to create garishness in the process though. To avoid that, I ensure one of the compliments are dominant and the other is muted or lighter. That way they work together rather than both of them fighting for attention.
And you’re so right about the emotive qualities of color, especially how they subtly interact with each other. We can stimulate just the right background psychology — or not — depending on the choices. I’ve found it helps, once you have an arrangement set up, to stop analyzing and just sit and notice how you feel.
Cheers,
John
Hi John,
Thanks for your tips!
Sherman
Thank for your copy of the color wheel! Its really a great help to me. Choosing colors is not a difficult job for me anymore!
Hi Mandy, I’m glad it helps you.
I’m learning about the different values color has on everything and your color wheels are very helpful in the self educating of me. Thanks so much.
great tool! i’ll definitely keep this open whenever i work. thanks!
Colour has an amazing impact on how we view & feel about everything. Especially when designing it can be very confusing with all the different shades. The colour wheel is a great resource tool. Thanks
I really like it! But you are missing 2 color schemes- triadic and tetrad (or double complementary). Add those and I think it would be great!
Hi Heidi,
Thanks for your comment. Yes, I’ll take those 2 schemes into consideration when I revise the color guide.
Sherman
Hi Sherman.
I’m a novice with color. I love and desire color. But, I would find myself latching onto the mono scheme. I’m venturing out a lot more now with the great thing COLOR. We recently moved into our somewhat dream home. We have one large orange accent wall (I think tastefully done) surrounded by white walls. We’re from
Florida but relocated to Atlanta. (I’m truly tropical). Case and point, color seem to scare me. That color wheel is really a neat tool, it soothes a lot of fears. I
would like to get my feet wet a little more with design.Your color wheel helps to make sense of what you are doing and the direction to take. Thanks Sherman.
Brenda
i actually used the advice to spruce up my makeup. i wanted to play up the green in my eyes (and minimize the brown). now i know red violet is the color choice for me.
@Brenda - You’re welcome. I’m glad you find the color wheel useful.
@Laura - Frankly, I haven’t thought of using the color wheel on makeup. But obviously it can.
Sherman
Very well presented, everyone who aspires to do any design work need this tool.
I would love to see this pushed to the next level with a little bit more practical advices on how to use these colour concepts.
Thanks,
Hi, Thank you for the colour wheel. It is great.
Is it possible to make a skin tones colour wheel?
Thanks.
Rena
Hi Sherman,
Thanks for the color guide. I have already put into use in my project and the effect looks good..
Also, I would like to say that you have a wonderful website, in terms of colours, information etc. All it looks so interesting to me and makes me want to know more.. You are great!
@Stephane - Thanks for your suggestion. I’ll post some advice on how to use these colour concepts when I get the time as I’ve been very busy.
@Rena - I do not know of any skin tone color wheel. But I guess when you use the light tints of the color wheel you might find colors to match skin tones.
@Felicia - Thanks for your compliments!
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