Color 101: Using the Color Wheel, Choosing and Matching Hues

(The First of a Six-Part Series)

Cynthia Rowley’s Rivington 3-Over-3 Sofa together with the most colorful decorative elements to adorn a living room.

Adding color to your home – or at the very least, conceptualizing how the hues will make your habitat more amazing – is also a way to add more color to your life. Yet there are a lot of questions as to what paint color to use in a home as well as color predicaments like whether to pick gray or blue.

Of course we won’t be able to send you paint swatches just so you know how to begin your color 101 journey. What you can do is to read this series of color and paint basics that will teach you how to shop for the best colors and to effectively use them in your home.

This first of a six-part series will teach you about color fundamentals – this is more like a crash course to reading the color wheel and how to harmonize hues.

Matching and mixing colors is no easy business, though. Don’t get the idea that everyone can do this without any knowledge of color fundamentals, don’t feel, insecure in pairing unique hues, too. It’s all about learning the science and the art behind it all and being comfortable in using it in your own home.

Decorating with Hues

It is crucial to keep the color theory in mind when it comes to color decoration. Before you start thinking if it’s complicated or not, here are the basic principles –

Knowing and using the color wheel
Color harmony
And color usage.

Color theory also creates logical color structure. For instance, you could have a bunch of vegetables and fruits. Color theory would dictate that you would organize these based on their color relation. The oranges would sit next to the lemons while the lemons would be right next to the green apples which sit right next to the blueberries, and so on.

Don’t fret, it is not as complex as it seems to sound. You just have to, primarily, orient yourself to the color wheel. This is a tool, a handy helper of sorts, which will guide you in picking the specific colors – even down to the specific shades – that you want.

The color wheel comprises 12 basic colors which are –

Red
Red orange
Orange
Yellow orange
Yellow
Yellow green
Green
Blue green
Blue
Blue violet
Violet
And red violet.

When dealing with paint, remember these terms –

Shade means any pure hue fused with black.

Tone is a hue mixed with gray.

Hue is any pure color with the exception of white or black.

Tint is a color mixed with white.

Here are the fundamental color harmonies that you need to keep in mind –

Primary colors are blue, yellow and red.
The secondary colors include green, orange and purple.
Tertiary colors are red orange, yellow orange, blue green, yellow green, red violet and blue violet.

Analogous hues are three hues that sit side-by-side on your color wheel such as green, yellow green and yellow.

Note that every hue outside of these already come from a mixture of hues to varying degrees.

Use the color wheel and these basic color guides so you don’t go wrong. Also, make it a point to look at Mother Nature for color inspirations. Just imagine a red flower encircled by green and yellow leaves. All these, the color of the leaves, the flowers and grass, all are inspirations for your color palette.

What about you, what are your color inspiration sources? Look around you – the possibilities are actually endless.

Tags: color 101, color basics, color choices, color combination, color fusion, color options, color palette, color schemes, McCreerys, McCreerys Home Furnishings

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 4th, 2017 at 8:30 am and is filed under Color Schemes, Interior Design 101, Interior Design Elements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.