What is Color Theory and it's Purpose?

Color theory is the study of how colors interact, influence emotions, and shape perceptions. It equips artists, designers, and creators with tools to select colors that effectively convey moods, messages, or branding goals. By understanding and applying color theory, designers can craft visually appealing and meaningful designs that resonate with their audience, strengthen branding, and enhance user experiences. Articles

Traditional and Modern Color Theory
Modern:	Traditional:
Explores historical knowledge of color behavior, including mixing, contrast effects, harmony, symbolism, and various schemes.	Often called color science, focuses on the scientific understanding and application of color.

20+ Key Color Theory Terms

Key Principles of Color Theory

The foundation of color theory lies in three chromatic properties:

Hue

Another name for color. For example, an apple’s color, or hue, may be red. The two words can be used interchangeably.

Chroma

The purity of a color. A color with high chroma has no neutral colors — white, black, or grey — added to it, and appears more vivid or pure. Adding one of those neutrals to a color reduces its chroma and the color then seems less vivid or pure.

Value

How light or dark a color is. Lighter colors have higher values — such as yellow having a higher value than a dark green. Black has the lowest value of any hue, and white the highest. This contributes to why the two colors are seen as direct opposites.

These properties combine to create diverse tones, enabling creators to achieve specific visual and emotional effects. Designers often consider how colors interact through complementation, contrast, and vibrancy to ensure a harmonious and impactful design.

Common Color Schemes

There is seven popular color schemes, to achieve cohesive and purposeful designs:

Analogous: Uses colors adjacent on the color wheel for a harmonious effect.

Monochromatic: Relies on variations in lightness and saturation of a single hue.

Complementary: Combines colors opposite each other on the color wheel for contrast.

Split-Complementary: Uses a base color and two adjacent to its complementary color for balance and contrast.

Triadic: Involves three evenly spaced colors on the color wheel, offering vibrancy and harmony.

Tetradic: Features two complementary color pairs for a diverse palette.

Square: Similar to tetradic but evenly spaced around the color wheel for balance and variety.

...Examples

Glossary
CMYK	Pigment Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, & Black

RGB	Red, Green, & Blue
HSB HUE	(red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple) saturation (neutral, semi-neutral, semi-saturated, saturated, super-saturated) brightness (dark, light).
PMS	Pantone Matching System: A system to allow designers to specify a specific colors when a design enters production stage—regardless of the equipment used to produce the color.
Saturation	How a hue looks under certain lighting. For example, a room with a yellow wall will look different throughout the day. In the morning it might look like a light yellow, while in the evening it might look gold, and at night it might look like a darker yellow or even gray.
Intensity	The brightness/strength or weakness/dullness of a pigment. The stronger, or brighter a color is, the more pigment is present in the paint. The weaker or duller a paint color is, there’s less pigment present. This factors into nearly all art mediums and supplies.
Tones	Created when gray is added to a hue. This makes the hue look softer or more dull than before.
Mass tones	Different than regular tones, a mass tone is the “base” color of a color. It’s the main color you see when looking at a particular hue. For example, the mass tone of mauve is violet.
Shade	A shade is a color created when black is added to a hue, making it a darker version of the base color.
Tint	Color created when white is added to a hue, making it a lighter version of the base color.
Primary colors	The three primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. These are the only colors that cannot be mixed or made from any other colors. All other colors come from these three primary colors.
Secondary colors	The three secondary colors are orange, green, and violet. Each is made from mixing equal amounts of two different primary colors.
Complex colors	Colors made from mixing secondary colors. These are known in two types: tertiary and quanternary.
A tertiary color	Comes from mixing two secondary colors, such as mixing green and violet.
A quanternary color	Comes from mixing two tertiary colors together.