Color Wheel and Color Theory

[pinksta]

When Web Site Design first start building their Web pages, they create pages in colors that they like. If you're lucky or have a good eye, you'll end up with colors that look nice together. But it's very easy to set up a color scheme those clashes and is difficult for your readers to view for long periods or at all.

Understanding color theory will help you to understand how color works on Web pages. And one of the first places to start learning color theory is with the color wheel. Sir Isaac Newton first put together a circular diagram of colors in 1666. This color wheel allows you to see groupings of colors that are harmonious together and other colors that might clash.

The primary colors (represented in the related image) are RED, YELLOW, and BLUE. These colors, in traditional color theory, cannot be formed by mixing any other color. All other colors are derived by combinations of these colors.

Secondary colors (represented in the related image) are ORANGE, GREEN, and PURPLE. These colors are the combination of red and yellow (orange), yellow and blue (green), and blue and red (purple).

Tertiary colors (represented in the related image) are YELLOW-ORANGE, RED-ORANGE, RED-PURPLE, BLUE-PURPLE, BLUE-GREEN, and YELLOW-GREEN. These are the combinations of the secondary colors. They are represented in HTML as:

[Soquili]

Hello Pinksta,

Posting a link to a commercial site within your very first post to the forums could be considered as SPAM.

Your information about colour theory is interesting although your information is only applicable to pigments used to make paint.

For use on the web RGB (Red, Green, Blue) are the primary colours. Secondary colours are Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow.

[Manwe]

Your information about colour theory is interesting although your information is only applicable to pigments used to make paint.

This seems to be a common mistake, thinking that the same colours apply to computers as in painting (been there myself).

Anyway, I can't say I entirely agree with the statement that seeing the colourwheel will help you find colours that look good together, cause I've known both those colourwheels (RYB and RGB) for years, and I still come up with colour combinations that look horrible...

[Soquili]

Manwe how have you been selecting your colours?

First attachment is an RGB colour wheel.

Selecting a colour and using tints and shades works well in some situations. See second attachment.

Selecting a colour and using Analogous colours allow more options but remain within a set colour range. See third attachment.

Selecting a colour and using split compliment provides similar colours and a contracting colour. See fourth attachment.

You can download a zipped .xar file containing the colour wheel for use within Xara Xtreme from the XaraXone http://www.xaraxone.com/html/templates.html

[Manwe]

Thanks for the tip, I'll make sure to give that a thought next time I design something

I've never used Xara tho, hence my only activity in this part of the forum (Site Design and Publishing)

[enjoibp3]

ohh wow, I currently go to school for web design/graphics and I'm in a class called color theory lol but everything that was posted here is exactly how it was explained to me in that class relating to graphics and websites so +1 for you guys