2007-07-25 - Understanding the Color Wheel for Interior Design
Color plays an important role in interior decorating.  It effects whether your home feels cozy, warm, and inviting or sophisticated, cool, and professional. Read more on Understanding the Color Wheel for Interior Design...

Color plays an important role in interior decorating.  It effects whether your home feels cozy, warm, and inviting or sophisticated, cool, and professional.  Choosing color combinations that work together can be intimidating, especially if you are new to interior design.  The complexity of color selection can be simplified with an understanding of the color wheel.

Most people put off learning the standard color wheel because the pure colors you see on the color wheel (brilliant orange, pure violet, and bright red) are not the most desirable colors for interior design.  The sophisticated, mixed colors seen in interior design magazines do not appear on the color wheel. However, the color wheel is one of the most powerful tools available to professional and amateur interior designers. First of all, within this colorful circle are harmonious color relationships and helpful color cues. Secondly, the color wheel can be used to build a color scheme from scratch or help an unsatisfying color scheme. Thirdly, the color wheel provides an orderly progression of color that helps people understand color balance. For these reasons an understanding of the color wheel is foundational to interior decorating.

The color wheel is built off of the primary colors, blue, red and yellow.  These colors cannot be created by any other colors.  They are the foundation of the color wheel and are placed equidistant from one another.

The primary colors can be combined to produce the secondary colors, also known as complementary colors. This system of color mixing is known as the subtractive process, because the resulting secondary color subtracts or absorbs even more waves from the white light than the first color did. (Read more on How We See Color… )

The secondary colors are:
· orange  (mix red + yellow)
· green   (mix yellow + blue)
· violet    (mix blue + red)

The final step to creating a color wheel is to produce tertiary colors. These colors are created when mixing one secondary and one primary color. For example the combination of blue + violet = blueviolet. In the production of a tertiary color three or more separate colors are mixed (one primary and one secondary – the combination of two primaries).  In the color wheel each tertiary color created is an equal combination of the two colors, left and right, surrounding an open segment.

The tertiary colors are:
· yellow-orange
· red-orange
· red-violet
· blue-violet
· blue-green
· yellow-green

The sequence of colors on the color wheel should resemble that of the rainbow.  Your understanding of the color wheel can now be used as the foundation to understanding color and color combination techniques for interior design purposes.

A strong and solid feeling can be accomplished by using a scheme of primary colors- red, blue and yellow.  These colors can be used all together or in pairs.  The primary colors also work equally in country, traditional, and modern rooms.

All colors can be tinted with white or shaded with black for variations.   This is ideal for creating different moods. For example if you can’t envision a bold orange and green room, think about pairing up their paler tints of peach and sage.

The primary and secondary colors illustrate that you can make compatible triadic schemes by choosing any three colors equidistant on the wheel. The combination of tertiary color creates a sophisticated look.

There are many theories about how to achieve color harmony. A color scheme that produces harmony can be based on analogous color, complementary colors, nature, warm and cool colors, saturation or tints.

Analogous Color
Analogous colors are any three colors that are side by side on the twelve part color wheel. Examples of analogous colors include yellow-green, yellow, and yellow-orange.  Usually one of these three colors predominates.

Complementary Contrast
The corresponding color directly across the wheel is known as the complementary color. For example, red and greed and red-purple and yellow-green are complementary colors.  Purely complementary colors create the most contrast, therefore, the opposing colors create maximum contrast and maximum stability.  As they are diluted, the intensity of the contrast changes and the mood changes.  This knowledge of the color wheel and complementary color can help when designing an interior and choosing an overall color scheme.

Nature
Nature provides a perfect departure point for color harmony because the combinations in nature often provide a harmony without being confined to a technical formula for color harmony.

Warm and Cool
To understand the difference between warm and cool colors envision the desert and the sky, or sitting at the beach.  Study the color wheel and see the clear distinction between warm and cool parts.  The combination of colors from opposite sides of the wheel can create a dynamic contrast.

Saturation/Tints
Depth and dimension can be with different percentages of one color. Single colors, can also be used by adjusting the intensity and creating a monochromatic scheme. For example, orange, coral, and peach offer a variety within the same family. This use of color creates a sophisticated, modern feeling.