Wheel of Color

Color is often the key ingredient for a design scheme, but it's hard to know just where to start.

This blue room is an example of a primary color scheme.

This laundry room utilizes complementary colors on the wheel.

This bedroom showcases an analagous color scheme.

Blue/green, red/orange and violet form the triad color scheme in this living room.

Designer Rebecca Pelletier is known for her fearless use of color and shares how to utilize the color wheel when making design decisions.

• The color wheel consists of three primary colors, red, yellow and blue, of which all 315,000 colors are derived.
  
• Secondary colors are created when two primary colors are mixed together. Violet consists of blue and red, green is made of yellow and blue, and yellow and red combine to make orange.
  
• Complementary colors are those opposite each other on the color wheel, like green and red and orange and blue.
  
• Analogous colors consist of three to six colors close together on the color wheel.
  
• A triad color scheme is any three colors that are equally spaced, like violet, red/orange and blue/green.
  
• A value is the lightness or darkness of a color. The value is determined by adding black to create a shade, white to create a tint and gray, which creates a tone. Monochromatic color schemes are shades and tints of one color.