The Color Wheel

The Color Wheel is the main tool used for color study and color scheme generation. Such wheel, represented with a circle, is generally composed by primary, secondary and tertiary colors, generally named hues.

Primary Colors. This is the name for colors that can't be composed combining two or more colors. Red, Blue and Yellow are the primary colors.

Secondary Colors. This is the name for colors that are the result of combining two primary colors, as for example the green color (yellow + blue), violet (a mix of red and blue), and orange (a mix of yellow and red).

Tertiary Colors. Such colors are the result of combining a primary color with a secondary color.

The sum of these color combinations produce several color ranges: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet and purple.

Color variations

You can obtain more color variations over primary, secondary and tertiary colors using shades and tints.

Monochromatic Colors

Monochromatic colors are all the hues of a single color. Monochromatic colors offer very litle contrast, and should be used with other colors in the design process for avoiding visual boring.

Complementary Colors

Generally it is a good idea to use the complementary color as the highlighting color in any design.

Analogous Colors

These are the colors adjacent each other in the color wheel.

Triad Colors

These are the colors equally positioned in the color wheel.