In the color mixing wheel, what’s your favorite color contrast?

Selling jewelry is about awakening an emotional response on the viewer. And color is the easiest and most direct way of getting into your customer’s heart.

Outstrip the usual color schemes so widely in use.

Crack the color mixing wheel and provide the market what it wants: innovation.

With your fresh color combinations grab attention and get the sale.

Skillful use of color is gained through the knowledge of how the color mixing wheel works. And all that info is right here!

You wouldn’t believe all the details found in the world of color. You’ll be amazed!

With these seven tips, your jewelry will become extraordinary jewelry.

• Contrast of pure color,
• Bright-dark contrast,
• Warm-cool contrast,
• Contrast between complementary colors,
• Simultaneous contrast,
• Qualitative contrast,
• Quantitative contrast.

This means that a color scheme will have contrast if the colors are in a comparative relationship.

To exemplify this, you cannot, calculate if a line is small or big if it’s standing by itself. Only when you compare it to a bigger or smaller line you’ll be able to perceive it as smaller or bigger. Color contrast works much the same way.

Contrast of pure color

This is the most simple color contrast. It is made by using three opposing colors from the color mixing wheel. An exemplary contrast of pure color is that of red, blue and yellow, the primary hues.

This contrast is the most powerful, frank, potent and multicolor of all contrasts. As you start using colors farther away from this primary scheme, the power of this contrast type starts fading away.

In other words, practice this rule only by using the 12 pure color hues of your color mixing wheel (don’t mix it using different tints, tones or shades of the colors found in your wheel).

You can also combine black or white in your pure color scheme. When white is used, it usually makes the colors dull and less shiny, while using black heightens the luminosity and overall color.

Bright-dark contrast

Black and white colors are considered as the maximum color contrast possible. Between these two extremes lies an infinite range of grays.

Gray is a neutral and inexpressive color.

Only when in near proximity with another color will it liven up and acquire character.

This Monet river scene is an example of bright-dark contrast.

The same experience happens with colors, each color can range from its lightest or darkest nature. Let’s take for example the blue color. When you mix it with black you’ll achieve a dark blue, and when you mix it with white you’ll acquire a pale blue.

The darker blue is a “shade” of blue and the pale blue is a “tint” of blue. In between these two, if you mixed the blue color with grey, you’d have a grayish-blue, which is a “tone” of blue.

To understand bright-dark contrast between black, gray and white, take a look at an etching from any famous artist. There you can easily distinguish brilliant gradations from pitch darkness to full light.

To clarify bright-dark contrast between colors, the most complex contrast, try changing the intensity of light when seeing pure colors. The bright-dark values of pure colors change depending on the intensity of light.

That’s why colors appear in their true hue only in daylight.

Warm-cool contrast

This is the most common and widely used perception of color. We are all familiar with the opinion that blue and green colors are seemingly cool while red and yellow hues are perceived as warm.

You can expand the warm-cool character of colors by using these other criteria:

Shade-glow, transparent-opaque, calm-exciting, liquid-thick, aerial-earthy, advancing-receding, light-heavy, moist-dry.

It’s a fallacy that warm colors are only those relating to red and yellow.

All colors can have warmer or cooler values.

For example, you can see a green color that is cool and next to it a warmer green. Or you can distinguish a cool red and also a warmer shade of it.

Don’t get confused between warm-cool contrast and bright-dark contrast. The difference between these two is that warm-cool contrast deals with luminous changes of colors within the same value (ie: changing the intensity or chroma).

On the other hand, dark-bright contrast is achieved when you change the value of the colors by darkening or brightening their hue (ie: changing their tone, tint and shade).

Contrast between complementary colors

Why is this important?

To make a successful color scheme using contrast between complementary colors, you must combine the complementary colors you want to use with the different tones of the same complementary colors.

In other words, you can combine complementary colors in their full range of tones, tints and shades. With any two complementary colors you can create marvellous colored grays to flatter your contrast.

Simultaneous contrast

You now know that color harmony is about the complementary nature of colors, understood as a color-filled visual impression and not as a color that exists in reality. It’s an occurrence of our optical and visual capacities.

It’s possible to bring about this visual effect by means of suggesting to the eye the appearance of a complementary color that is not really there.

By displaying a color with its adequate complementary gray tone, for example, you can trick the eye to see its complementary color.

This is simultaneous contrast. You can provoke a simultaneous contrast to produce an effect, but it’s always used intentionally, with a purpose.

Qualitative contrast

When we talk about a qualitative contrast we are referring to a saturated and luminous red, for example, in opposition to a muted and dull red.

Quantitative contrast

For example, you can have side by side a small yellow circle and a small purple circle. Because yellow is such a luminous color it will easily beat, in “importance”, the small purple circle.

This is quantitative contrast. It’s like the adequate balance between colors, the expressive strength. All colors have a different value, that’s why if you wanted to achieve balance between the yellow and purple circles you should make the purple circle bigger.

In other words, color values can be transformed in different “stain sizes” in order to balance the differences in expressive strengths.

We’ve just learned the basics of the seven rules of contrast in color.

It’s amazing all the nitty-gritty that color theory has.

It’s been absolutely thrilling to learn all this and share it with you.

You can discover more details in other sections of this site. The best way to get to grips with all this is by practicing.

Mixing color is definitely an art, isn’t it?

Go from Color Mixing Wheel back to Color Theory

References used in this section: Itten (1994)