Color Mania!

I constantly keep myself in the know when it comes to the world of color. I’m always reading new material, following blogs, and attending webinars. You name it, if it’s about color, I’m all over it!

Recently someone asked me why I’m able to see color so well. I’d like to buff my nails, raise my eyebrows and say, "eh, I was just born this way!" But the truth is that we can all train ourselves in color.

I think the best way to coach your eyes is to compare colors. When you hold colors that are similar next to each other, study them. Ask yourself what the difference is. You’ll soon be able to see that maybe one is slightly darker than the other. The more you train your eyes, the more you’ll be able to distinguish what makes each color different.

Some basics:
Colors can be divided into two categories, warm and cool.
Warm colors feel warmer. Think reds, oranges and yellows. Colors that you see in warm things such as fire, sun, etc.
Cool colors are the opposite. Think whites, greens and blues. These are colors you see in snow, water, dewy fog etc.

When you start to think about these two categories while comparing colors, you can then determine more subtle differences. Does this mean that a cool color like green can NEVER be warm? Nope, that’s the fun part of hues! The more yellow you add to a green, the warmer it becomes.

So, let’s give it a whirl, waddya say!?

Let’s look at what everyone finds to be the hardest… Whites.

Here is a white






Now let’s scroll down…..






Here is another white.






Now let’s put them side-by-side so you can compare.






The one on the left appears warmer, while the one on the right feels cooler. Can you see it? So what does that mean? It means the color on the left has a warmer color mixed in it, likely a red, while the one on the right has more of a cooler-blue
in it.

When you’ve gotten comfortable with comparing and identifying the temperature of color, you can take it one step further. Get yourself a little paint set. No, you don’t have to be an artist, don’t panic! Find a color you like and try to recreate it. This is a great test because it helps your mind to fine tune what a color is missing and ultimately learn what ingredients make up each color.

Let’s look at another example. Say you want to make this color:






You start with a basic blue






Okay, now you can see that we need more purple, or red (red and blue make purple)

So now you’ve got a purple-blue, that is close the original, but let’s look side-by-side and compare the difference.






The original blue on the left feels slightly cooler and lighter, so if you add white (maybe a little more blue) a bit at a time, you’ll likely get it just right!

If you like the idea of fine tuning your eye to colors, and don’t want to mess with paints, here is a fantastic test online. It asks you to organize (click & drag) the colors in order. They give you a start and finish color on each row.

Happy Color-sorting! What score did you get?


~Barbara Ann~