Color attracts attention, creates an emotional connection, and leads the consumer to the product (Brannon, p. 117). Color is often a primary reason why a person is attracted to and buys a particular item of clothing. A new T-shirt in a different color can help transform the look of a product year after year.

Color is used to attract attention, group related elements, convey meaning, and generally enhance the aesthetics of your site. It can be used to organize your elements and create a visual hierarchy in your design. A small dose of color that contrasts with your main color will draw attention. It will give emphasis.

Use a Color Scheme and Color Temperature for Design Harmony

1. Monochromatic – Take one hue and create other elements from different shades and tints of it.
2. Analogous – Use three colors located beside one another on the color wheel (e.g., orange, yellow-orange and yellow to show sunlight).

The importance of color design stems from the significance of color to the human mind. Color creates ideas, expresses messages, spark interest, and generate certain emotions. Within the psychology of colors, warm colors show excitement, optimism, and creativity; cool colors symbolize peace, calmness, and harmony.

Color is often deemed to be an important element of design as it is a universal language which presents the countless possibilities of visual communication. Hue, saturation, and brightness are the three characteristics that describe color. Hue can simply be referred to as “color” as in red, yellow, or green.

1. Color mixing and matching eliminates repetition and creates a sense of space and readability. Look at all these flowers in the foreground on the left. They are repetitive, and as such, uninteresting in shape or color.

The color wheel is an arrangement of all colors on the spectrum based on their relationships, and it’s useful in creating harmonious color schemes. Complementary colors enhance each other’s intensity when placed right next to each other, which is why they’re often used to create bold, high-contrast images that pop.

They are produced by mixing a primary color with an adjacent secondary color.

1. yellow + orange = yellow-orange.
2. orange + red = red-orange.
3. red + violet = violet-red.
4. violet + blue = blue-violet.
5. blue + green = green-blue.
6. green + yellow = yellow-green.

By mixing appropriate proportion of two primary colors such as red and blue, all colors along the line which joins red and blue can be generated, similarly when blue and green are mixed all the colors along the blue and green line can be generated. This area is called the color gamut.

The complementary colors (cyan, yellow, and magenta) are also commonly referred to as the primary subtractive colors because each can be formed by subtracting one of the primary additives (red, green, and blue) from white light.

Red, green, and blue are known as the primary colors of light. The combinations of two of the three primary colors of light produce the secondary colors of light.

See what happens when you mix together the three primary colors of light: red, green and blue.

There are six tertiary colors: yellow-orange, red-orange, red-violet, blue-violet, blue-green, and yellow-green. Others purchase only the primary and secondary colors, and mix the tertiary colors themselves. Neutrals. Black, white, and grey are considered neutrals.

The interesting thing to know about white is that adding red, green and blue light together will give you white light. In fact, no combination of other colors will make white paint. That’s because any paint color you try to work with will absorb at least one particular wavelength.