Warm colours vs. Cold colours

I’ve been procrastinating, I know.
But it’s only because I am finding this warm colour vs. cold colour thing very vague.
Almost like learning French grammar: tons of ‘rules’ but then tons of “exceptions” to the said rule. So what was the purpose of the rule? Anyway, moving on - I give you:

Cold colours vs. Warm colours: 

The Chromatic circle can be divided in half separating the cold colours from the warm colours.

As you can see, the yellow and purple play for both sides. They are neutral in that way.

I guess we could call them the bi’s of the colour spectrum ;)

(Sigh) Here’s where it gets interesting {read: where it becomes a bitch}
Even though blue is a "cold" colour it can also be considered "warm" if in its composition there is a high concentration of red or yellow.

Another example is brown - normally a warm colour, but when composed with a high concentration of blue or purple hues, it becomes a cold colour.

It gets better, wait till we get into skin tones, then you’ll really love this. 

But the general idea is this:

Warm colours are typically composed of red and yellow derivatives.

Cold colours are typically composed of blue and yellow derivatives.

The more observant of you might have picked up on the fact that our aforementioned complimentary colours (described in previous posts) are a combination of one warm colour and one cold colour. With the exception of yellow and purple of course but that's only because, as mentioned above, yellow and purple are the neutral colours of the spectrum. Generally though, yellow warms up a colour and purple cools it off.

And voila! We're done with the lesson! Unless you want me to get into the psychology of warm and cold colours. It's simple enough, psychologically red reminds us of fire thus making it a warm colour and blue of course reminds us of ice therefore making it a cold color. Get the jest? Thought so. ;)


Blog to you soon, 


Sahar