Decor Portfolio

The eye distinguishes countless colors – millions perhaps – all based on gradations of what appears in the rainbow, all variations of the primary colors, red, yellow, and blue. Mixing colors is an art in itself! Knowing how colors relate to each other, you’ll have an extensive palette of hues, tints, tones, and shades to create just the color you’re looking for.

COLOR TERMS:

HUE – The pure color; TONE – Hue + small amount of gray or opposite color (will mute or tone down the color); TINT – Hue + White (will lighten the color); SHADE – Hue + Black (will darken the color).

The Color Wheel

When light waves of a certain length stimulate the eye, it interprets them as a particular color. Daylight is the random mixture of all light in all its wavelength; when daylight passes through a prism (or a raindrop), it brakes down into a spectrum of colors (or a rainbow), that ranges from red at one end, through orange, yellow, green, and blue, to violet at the other. When this band of colors is bent into a circle, it forms a color wheel. Form a decorating standpoint, the color wheel can be a useful tool to help see how different colors relate to each other and how they can be combines to create a pleasing palette for the home.

Red, yellow, and blue are considered primary colors because they are fundamental not mixed from the others but rather the base from which all others are derived. The secondary colors orange, green, and violet are each made from equal amounts of the primaries on either side. Lastly, the six tertiaries, red-orange and blue-violet among them, are derived from equal amounts of their neighbors. By varying of the proportions of this colors – adding a little or a lot more of a neighbor, for instance you can create any number of new colors, or hues, and give each a name.

Hue

Simply described, the term hue refers to the assigned to a particular color; it is often used interchangeably with the word color. Some hues carry universally accepted names, such as red or blue-green, as found on the color wheel. But many hues are arbitrarily assigned: some can be fairly easy to recognize lilac, for example, or apricot- but others can be difficult to interpret because the name suggests so many possibilities. In the family of clues, for instance, sky, slate, marine, and periwinkle evoke images that have different color meanings to you, your spouse, the carpet manufacturer, and the paint dealer.

Analogous Hues

Related, or analogous, hues are found next to each other on the color wheel and typically share a common primary base: orange-yellow, yellow, and yellow-green are analogous, as are yellow, yellow-green, and green, since all share the same primary. Because they have something in common, analogous hues can make for a harmonious family of color.

Complementary Hues

Hues found directly opposite of each other on the wheel are called complementary. Typically they set up a strong contrast when placed together arrange and blue, for instance, or red-violet and yellow-green. When one of the complements is lightened with white, darkened with black, or toned down with gray, the pair can coexist more harmoniously.

Value

The relative lightness or darkness of a color is its value. Any hue can be lightened with the addition of white in large or small amounts. And becomes a tint. When darkened with an addition of black, it is called a shade. The variations can be dramatic: any hue can be lightened or darkened, so much that its color is barely noticeable unless positioned against white or black. Pink is a tint of red that typically had a moderate amount of white added to create a strong pastel; cream is a tint of yellow containing comparatively whiter. Olive is shade of green that s been darkened moderately; navy is a shade of blue containing a larger amount of black.

Tone

Hues with some gray added, rather than just white or black, are referred to as tones. If lavender is a tint of violet, then mauve might be considered a tone. Many colors with a smoky effect are hues that have been toned down with a moderate amount of gray.

Intensity

Another characteristic of color is intensity (sometimes referred to as chroma), which indicates the strength and brightness of a hue, undiluted by tinting or shading. (You might think of it as the color straight from the artist s tube). The more of the dominant hue, and the fewer tints or shade, the more vivid and intense the color appears to the eye. Royal blue and royal purple are familiar hues that can be described as intense, ideal perhaps for a monarch s robe but probably better in smaller doses in the room of your home.

A strong hue can look more intense and even seem jarring to the eye if placed next to an equally intense complement. The combinations of bright blue and orange, or pure red and green, better suit flags and football uniforms than the walls of your room. Pairing an intense color with a tint or a shade of its complement, however, can make a satisfactory combination bright red Christmas ornaments against a dark green tree, or a peach tint background enlivened with accents of strong blue.

Natural Light

Since daylight contains all the colors of the spectrum, it is in natural light that colors appear in their truest form and at midday that they take on their purest appearance.

Light from the north tends to be cool and steady, toward the blue end of the spectrum. Eastern light looks bright and yellow in the early morning but evens out as the day passes. Light form the south nearly always looks and feels warm-an especially welcome attribute during winter months-and can seem warmer still as it moves west and takes on the reddish cast of the late afternoon.