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Primary Colors

Primary Colors

Color Terms You Need To Know When Decorating

Color is the key to successful decorating. You can have the most expensive furnishings you can find, but without the right color scheme, they mean nothing. Color can work magic in a room by taking disparate furnishings and uniting them with color.

Adding color to a room is quite inexpensive. A new color of paint and fabrics can totally change a room.

The human eye can perceive approximately 10 million different colors. Just imagine all of the different color combinations that can be created. Even so, some color combinations are definitely better than others.

When looking at colors, there are eleven different terms that you should know:

1. Primary colors are the three main colors that every other color is made from: red, blue and yellow. Primary colors are often used in children's rooms because they are bright and will catch a child's attention.

2. Secondary colors are the colors that are created when you combine equal parts of the three primary colors. The color orange comes from red and yellow; green is from yellow and blue; and violet is from blue and red.

3. Tertiary colors are the result of combining a primary color with the nearest secondary color to it on the color wheel. The colors would appear as blue-green, yellow-green, yellow-orange, red-purple, and blue-purple.

4. Related color schemes result from combining secondary and tertiary colors. For instance, the colors blue-green and green will evoke a calming effect because there are no jarring changes in color.

5. Complementary colors are located directly opposite each other on the color wheel. They would turn gray when they are mixed together in paint, but they can be used together – carefully – when decorating a room. Sometimes these color combinations can be too overwhelming so care is needed when using them.

6. Hue is a descriptive word for color, such as leaf green, robin's egg blue or burgundy.

7. Saturation means how saturated (how much color) there is in the basic color. For example, light blue and navy are both still blue. Navy is more saturated with the blue color.

8. The value of a color is how light or dark a color is. White has the brightest value and black has the darkest value.

9. Tints represent the colors that are closest to white in value. These would be pastel colors.

10. Shades are the colors that are closest to black in color, like hunter green or deep purple.

11. Neutrals are the "non" colors, like black, white, gray, brown and beige. They can produce a pleasing color scheme on their own or mixed with other colors.

Color plays an important part in decorating. The entire feel of a room can be changed just by changing the color scheme.

About the Author

Jude Wright is the owner of DecoratingSimple.com where you can find great decorating ideas for those on a budget. Stop by and get your free ebook, ”Home Decor Ideas for Those on a Budget.”

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Primary Colors

Apparent Color Of Objects And Symbolic Uses Of Color

Since the colors that compose sunlight or white light have different wavelengths, the speed at which they travel through a medium such as glass differs. Red light, having the longest wavelength, travels more rapidly through glass than blue light, which has a shorter wavelength. Therefore, when white light passes through a glass prism, it is separated into a band of colors called a spectrum. The colors of the visible spectrum, called the elementary colors, are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet (in that order).

In fact color is a property of light and depends on its wavelength. When light falls on an object, some of it is absorbed and some is reflected. The apparent color of an opaque object depends on the wavelength of the light that it reflects; e.g., a red object observed in daylight appears red because it reflects only the waves producing red light. The color of a transparent object is determined by the wavelength of the light transmitted by it. An opaque object that reflects all wavelengths appears white; one that absorbs all wavelengths appears black. Black and white are not generally considered true colors as black is said to result from the absence of color, and white from the presence of all colors mixed together.

Colors whose beams of light in various combinations can produce any of the color sensations are called primary, or spectral, colors. The process of combining these colors is said to be "additive"; i.e., the sensations produced by different wavelengths of light are added together. The additive primaries are red, green, and blue-violet. White can be produced by combining all three primary colors. Any two colors whose light together produces white are called complementary colors, e.g., yellow and blue-violet, or red and blue-green.

When pigments are mixed, the resulting sensations differ from those of the transmitted primary colors. The process in this case is "subtractive," since the pigments subtract or absorb some of the wavelengths of light. Magenta (red-violet), yellow, and cyan (blue-green) are called subtractive primaries, or primary pigments. A mixture of blue and yellow pigments yields green, the only color not absorbed by one pigment or the other. A mixture of the three primary pigments produces black.

The scientific description of color, or colorimetry, involves the specification of all relevant properties of a color either subjectively or objectively. The subjective description gives the hue, saturation, and lightness or brightness of a color. Hue refers to what is commonly called color, i.e., red, green, blue-green, orange, etc. Saturation refers to the richness of a hue as compared to a gray of the same brightness; in some color notation systems, saturation is also known as chroma. The brightness of a light source or the lightness of an opaque object is measured on a scale ranging from dim to bright for a source or from black to white for an opaque object (or from black to colorless for a transparent object). In some systems, brightness is called value.

A subjective color notation system provides comparison samples of colors rated according to these three properties. In an objective system for color description, the corresponding properties are dominant wavelength, purity, and luminance. Much of the research in objective color description has been carried out in cooperation with the Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage (CIE), which has set standards for such measurements. In addition to the description of color according to these physical and psychological standards, a number of color-related physiological and psychological phenomena have been studied. These include color constancy under varying viewing conditions, color contrast, afterimages, and advancing and retreating colors.

Color has long been used to represent affiliations and loyalties (e.g., school or regimental colors) and as a symbol of various moods (e.g., red with rage) and qualities (e.g., worthy of a blue ribbon). A well-known use of the symbolism of color is in the liturgical colors of the Western Church, according to which the color of the vestments varies through the ecclesiastical calendar; e.g., purple (i.e., violet) is the color of Advent and Lent; white, of Easter; and red, of the feasts of the martyrs.

About the Author

Dr.Badruddin Khan teaches Chemistry in the University of Kashmir, Srinagar, India.

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