Figure 3: The reds are spit into a warm, yellowish red on top and a cool, bluish red (magenta) on bottom.Ĭolor temperature is also important during paint mixing. Describing how a color leans towards another primary or secondary is also referred to as its“bias.” A red, as we can see, can have a yellow or a blue bias. But if you identify and compare the “color temperatures”, a bluish red (magenta) is cooler than a yellowish red (Figure 3). Comparing “red” to “magenta” might be less obvious since they are next to each other. Figure 2: The classic color wheel divided into Cool and Warm halves.Ĭompare “yellow” to “blue” and it’s easy to see yellow is warm and blue is cool.
Regardless, the general idea is the warm colors are Red, Orange and Yellow and the cool colors are Green, Blue and Magenta (Figure 2). The line location varies based upon the reasoning of the theorist. A dividing line splits the wheel into warm and cool. Most theories start with the classic six point color wheel (three primary colors and three secondary colors). The concept of warm and cool colors has been written about for hundreds of years. Figure 1: A “split primary” color wheel with warm and cool primary colors forming 4 color quadrants.
