Dalton Girls Pure Color Ring

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Pure Color Ring

Most of us are put off by the standard color wheel we encountered in school, and for good reason. The pure colors you see on the typical color wheel - brilliant orange, pure violet, and bright red - aren't ones you're likely to want to use in your home. And the sophisticated, mixed colors you see in design magazines don't appear on the color wheel. No wonder we think the color wheel is useless.

It's not. In fact, the color wheel is one of the most powerful decorating tools available, once you know how to use it. Within this colorful circle are harmonious color relationships and helpful color cues. With a little knowledge and patience, you can use the color wheel to build a color scheme from scratch or amend one that's unsatisfying.

It helps to simplify the standard color wheel. Many color wheels show a light, medium and dark value of each of the 12 colors, for a total of 36 colors. That's a lot to take in at a glance, and it's easy to feel overwhelmed. By contrast, the color ring here shows the 12 colors in their pure form only. Refer to this ring as you read about the different kinds of colors and how they are formed. If this discussion seems a little academic, take heart; a familiarity with pure colors will help you perceive the undertones and nuances in paint and other decorating materials.

	Primary colors - red, blue and yellow - make up all other colors. Intense red, blue and yellow in large quantities can be harsh; low-intensity versions of the primaries, colors such as cranberry, navy and gold, are more livable.
	Secondary colors lie midway between the primary colors on the color ring. These colors come from combining the primaries: yellow + red = orange yellow + blue = green red + blue = violet (often called purple)
	Intermediate colors result from mixing a primary and a secondary that are adjacent on the ring. Red (a primary) and violet (a secondary) combine to make red-violet. There are six intermediate colors on the color ring: yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, red-violet, red-orange and yellow-orange.

You may wonder where brown comes from. Most browns are dark-value, low-intensity versions of warm colors, such as red-orange or yellow-orange.

Primary, secondary and intermediate colors in their pure form are relevant because they are the source of all the mixed colors we see. (Most mixed colors also contain one or more of the true neutrals, black, white and gray, which are not on the color ring.) Pure orange, for example, is the source of colors such as spice, pumpkin and peach. Making the connection between the colors you like to use and the colors on the color ring is the first step toward using the ring to develop a personal color palette. The Dalton Girls can help you with this.


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