The knowledge of color theory can help you when it comes to the decisions around what colors to use.

Monochromatic color schemes are derived from one base color and composed of variations of that color achieved using tints, tones and shades.Ĭhoosing the right color combinations for your marketing materials and branding is imperative to the success of your campaign.

Using triadic colors helps create a visual that achieves both contrast and harmony.

Triadic colors are colors that are evenly spaced around the color wheel.

Analogous colors make aesthetically pleasing color palettes and also help to lead the viewer’s eye as the colors easily and naturally transition into one another. For example, red, orange and yellow are analogous colors.

Analogous colors are colors that sit next to each other on the color wheel.

The sharp contrast between complementary colors creates a color scheme that pops and helps create clear differentiation between elements. For example, the colors red and green are complementary colors.

Complementary colors are colors that are opposites on the color wheel.

You can have complementary colors, analogous colors, and triadic colors. While warm colors make you think of warm things, cool colors make you think of cool things, such as water, ice or the sky.Ĭolor schemes are combinations of colors that are developed using the color wheel. Cool colors consist of blue, green and purple and can have calming and soothing effects on people. These colors tend to make you think of warm things such as sunlight and heat. Warm colors consist of red, orange and yellow. Every color has a temperature of either warm or cool. If you draw a line through the center of the wheel, you’ll separate the colors into two sections, warm colors and cool colors. It is not quite yellow and it is not quite orange. For example, if you mix yellow and orange, you come away with a color that is somewhere in between.

Tertiary colors are the six remaining colors on the color wheel that come from both secondary and primary colors and are essentially different hues of the primary and secondary colors.

These come directly from the primary colors, hence the naming of “secondary.” If you mix red and yellow, you get orange, if you mix red and blue, you get purple, and if you mix blue and yellow, you get green.

Secondary colors are the colors of orange, purple and green.In theory, primary colors are the root of every other color, because you can pretty much make any color by mixing together a variation of the primary colors. Primary colors are the colors of yellow, red and blue.The color wheel consists of three primary colors, three secondary colors and six tertiary colors.

The first color wheel was designed by Sir Isaac Newton in 1666.

Primary colors secondary color wheel