Discover the Interior Design Color Wheel

Understanding the Interior Design Color Wheel

• All color is made up from 3 colors - the primary colors - red, yellow and blue.
  
  Any color you see will be made up of different combinations of red, yellow and blue.









• Equal amounts of any 2 of the primary colors creates the secondary colors - so, blue and yellow create green - blue and red create violet (purple) - yellow and red create orange.












• Then, if equal amounts of a primary color and an adjoining secondary color are mixed, they will create a tertiary color.
  
  So, if red is added to orange - 'red-orange' is produced (positioned between red and orange on the color wheel). And, if yellow is added to orange - 'yellow-orange' is produced (positioned between yellow and orange on the color wheel). And so on. We can see how, in this way, the whole basic interior design color wheel builds up.
  
  



• Warm colors are on the red/orange side of the color wheel - from red-violet (a little to the purple side of primary red) right the way through to yellow-green (a little to the green side of primary yellow).
  
  Warm colors tend to be used in large spaces, and make a room feel smaller and more cosy.



• Cool colors are on the blue side of the color wheel - from pure violet, through to pure green.
  
  Cool colors tend to be used more when decorating in small spaces. they make a room feel larger, more spacious, relaxing, but 'cooler'.



• A full color wheel contains many different color combinations. It also includes all the different tones of each color (how light or dark a color is).
  
  A color with white added is called a tint.
  
  A color with black added is called a shade.









• Putting all the colors, together with the tints and shades, together in this way - makes it much easier for interior designers to choose a color scheme they know will work.
  
  I will show you how to do this in the next section on decorating color schemes.



• You can buy color wheels made of card, with another circular card attached. This turns, and has holes cut into it, so that you are easily shown which colors will best match the main color you have chosen.
  
  Once you have got the hang of this, it is quite easy to create a really effective color scheme.








• I use my color wheel all the time. If you do want to use one or buy one, make sure you get an artist or interior design color wheel, and not a web or RGB color wheel.
  
  An RGB color wheel is used for computer design - it is based on the light spectrum (rather than paint colors) - which is used for creating colors on VDUs, TVs and computer monitors. The light spectrum has red, green and blue as it's primary colors (not red, yellow and blue - like we are interested in) - so avoid this, unless you want some very weird results.


Buy your color wheel from Amazon ...
(Just click on the image to find out more info, or buy)




Or take a look on eBay (below) to buy your color wheel inexpensively, straight away.
This is a live feed from eBay - click on a product to view further details or purchase the item.




• Now you have a good understanding of how color and the color wheel works, I would like to show you how to use the interior design color wheel to discover what colors go together - and how to create perfect decorating color schemes, with the help of your wheel.
  
  
  
  
  
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