The colour wheel

The painter's colour wheel arranges hues in a circle. It is a tool for predicting mixes and for choosing harmonies. Every colour can be described by three properties: hue (where it sits on the wheel), value (light to dark) and chroma or saturation (intensity).

Step by step

1. Traditional painter's primaries are red, yellow and blue. Mixing pairs gives secondaries: orange, green and violet. Mixing a primary with a neighbouring secondary gives tertiaries such as yellow-green or red-violet.
2. Complementary colours sit opposite each other: red–green, blue–orange, yellow–violet. Side by side they look more intense; mixed together they neutralise each other towards grey or brown.
3. Analogous colours sit next to each other (for example yellow, yellow-orange, orange). They create calm, unified harmonies.
4. Real paints are not perfect primaries. A warm red (cadmium red) and a cool red (quinacridone or alizarin crimson) mix very different purples — that is why a split-primary palette uses a warm and cool version of each primary.
5. Printers and screens use other systems: CMY(K) for ink and RGB for light. The painter's wheel is a practical guide to mixing pigments, not a law of physics.
6. Make your own wheel with the paints you actually own. It is more useful than any printed chart.