theory of colours and colour palettes

Prachi Jain

Mar 29, 20223 min read

Updated: Jun 4, 2022

Reference

https://www.hamstech.com/fashion-designing-guide-to-optimal-colour-combinations-for-attires

What is colour theory?

Let’s start at the basics: what actually is color theory?

Color theory is a framework that informs the use of color in art and design, guides the curation of color palettes, and facilitates the effective communication of a design message on both an aesthetic and a psychological level.

Modern color theory is largely based on Isaac Newton’s color wheel, which he created all the way back in 1666. The basic color wheel displays three categories of color; primary colors, secondary colors, and tertiary colors. If you remember learning about these in art class, well done—you’ve already grasped the basics of color theory!

Let’s have a quick refresh on what these color categories entail:

Primary colors are colors you can’t create by combining two or more other colors. The primary colors are red, blue, and yellow.
The secondary colors are orange, purple, and green—in other words, colors that can be created by combining any two of the three primary colors.
Tertiary colors are created by mixing a primary color with a secondary color. The tertiary colors are magenta, vermillion, violet, teal, amber, and chartreuse.

Introduction to the color wheel

The color wheel doesn’t just chart each primary, secondary, and tertiary color—it also charts their respective hues, tints, tones, and shades. By visualizing how each color relates to the color that comes next to it on a rainbow color scale, the color wheel helps designers to create bespoke color palettes that promote aesthetic harmony. Let’s dive into these color variants a little deeper:

Hue

Hue refers to the pure pigment of a color, without tint or shade. In that respect, hue can be interpreted as the origin of a color. Any one of the six primary and secondary colors is a hue.

Shade

Shade refers to how much black is added into the hue. As such, shade darkens a color.

Tint

The opposite of shade, tint refers to how much white is added to a color. As such, tint lightens a color.

Tone

Tone is the result of a color that has had both white and black added to it. In other words, tone refers to any hue that has been modified with the addition of grey—as long as the grey is purely neutral (only containing white and black).

Color temperature

Warm colors contain shades of yellow and red; cool colors have a blue, green, or purple tint; and neutral colors include brown, gray, black, and white. The temperature of a color has a significant impact on our emotional response to it. Within the psychology of colors, for example, warm colors show excitement, optimism, and creativity, whereas cool colors symbolize peace, calmness, and harmony. But we’ll talk a little bit more about color psychology later on!

Introduction to color palettes

A color palette is a combination of colors used by UI designers when designing an interface. When used correctly, color palettes form the visual foundation of your brand, help to maintain consistency, and make your user interface aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable to use.

While color palettes date back thousands of years, color palettes are commonly used in digital design, presented as a combination of HEX codes. HEX codes communicate to a computer what color you want to display using hexadecimal values. Back in the ’90s, most digital color palettes only included eight colors. Now, designers have a myriad of shades and hues from the color wheel to choose from.

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