Color and you

              Cooperative Extension Service
College of Agriculture and
Home Economics
N EW
M EX IC O STA
E
UNIVERSITY
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Color and You
Guide C-301
Susan Wright, Extension Clothing and Textiles
Specialist
This publication is scheduled to be updated and reissued 5/06.
To find more resources for your business, home, or family, visit the College of Agriculture and Home Economics
on the World Wide Web at www.cahe.nmsu.edu
You learn about color by experimenting with it. As
you learn more about color, you will select clothing
and cosmetic colors that will be harmonious with your
own personal coloring, figure type, and personality type.
How are colors created? A widely accepted theory
of color is based on the idea that all colors are derived
from the three primary colors-red, yellow, and blue.
All other colors come from mixtures of these three
primary colors. Thinking about colors around you and
where they might be placed on a color wheel will help
you see color relationships.
Primary colors: red, yellow, and blue
Secondary colors: green, orange, purple
Intermediate colors: yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple,
blue-purple, blue-green, yellow-green
Gray: combination of all pigments
Further mixing of neighboring colors produces
many other colors and color gradations. ( “Mixed”
colors, then, can be considered as relatives, since they
have common ancestors.) You will note that any
mixed color fits into the color wheel according to the
amount of yellow, red, or blue that it contains.
Since fashion designers delight in giving each color
a new name each year, you need to learn to identify
the true color, or hue, you ar seeking. Hue is the term
used for the name of a color.
Within any family of colors there can be both light
and dark, as well as bright and dull colors. For ex-ample,
brown and beige can be closely related to the
same orange or yellow-red family, with the brown a
dark, dull orange and the beige a light, dull orange.
Warm or Cool Colors
Colors are considered warm if they contain enough
yellow or yellow-red. They are considered cool if they
contain a noticeable quantity of blue.
Note that there are warm and cool versions in each
color family. Purple-red or bluish-red is the cool ver-sion
of red. Aqua is an example of a warm version of
a cool color because some yellow had to be mixed
with the predominately blue color.
Value
Value, the second dimension of color, describes the
lightness or darkness of a color.
You have a choice within each color family from
light to dark colors.