Colour theory.

OldGoat

Colour.

Hopefully some will find this a useful starting point for making those colour decisions.

Choosing and matching colours is always fraught with problems especially when we tend to buy so much online and the colours represented on the image are not necessarily the colours on the garment.
When colours work well together the outfit becomes enhanced, a kind of gestalt effect where the Whole becomes more then just the sum of its parts. However when the colours don’t tie together the resulting catastrophe can leave you scared and even ridiculed for life.

Colour is the by-product of the spectrum of light, as it is reflected or absorbed then received by the human eye and processed by the human brain. When light hits objects - clothes, some of the wavelengths are absorbed and some are reflected, depending on the materials in the cloth. The reflected wavelengths are what we perceive as the object's colour.
All that the above really means is that colours can appear different in different light levels. At low light levels colours start to fade out. All cats are grey in the dark.

For our purposes here colour is divided into 3 primary colours. The primaries most frequently used are Red, Green and Blue. From these 3 primaries almost any colour can be made. Mix red and green to get yellow. Mix green and blue to get cyan and so on. Yellow, cyan and the other produced colours are the secondary colours. Tertiary colours are blends of a primary and a secondary colour.
These collections of colours or hues, can be seen on colour wheels, which are aids to designers (and clothes horses like us)

See image1

Now you just need to throw in some tints, tones and shades to the mix to get a full range. A tint is when white is added to the hue and a shade is when black is added to the hue. Adding grey to the hue creates a tone. Varying the amount of grey, white or black varies the tone, tint or shade of the hue. White, grey and black are considered to be neutral colours.


Now, what does all that have to do with matching a top and trousers. It becomes easy now that you have a colour wheel to work with. Colours are matched in various ways:

1: Complementary. See image2. These are colours that are directly opposite each other on the colour wheel and work well together for making bold statements if used sparingly. In large amounts they can be off-putting but when used as a highlight they are stunning. Red and green are a good example or yellow & purple. Remember that secondary colours also have complementary colours such as red/violet --> yellow/green.

2:Analogous: See image3. Analogous colours live beside each other on the wheel. Pick the dominant colour from the wheel and the analogous colours are on either side of it. One of the analogous should be used to support the dominant colour and the other used to accent it. Conceder something like using dark green as the dominant colour with light green being the support and light blue as an accent. You don’t have to stop at just the 3 colours; you can keep widening the range but remember to balance it out.

3:Triads: See image4. This is a set of 3 (hence the name J) colours spaced evenly around the colour wheel. These colours need to be balanced without letting one of them dominate the other two.

4: Split complements: See image5. This works well. Firstly pick the dominant colour then find it’s complementary. Now choose and use the analogous colours to the complementary with the dominant colour.


Perceptions of Colour.
Colours are often referred to by the qualities they emanate. Some colours are cool some are warm. Warm colours tend to be vivid and energetic are dominant or forward colours while cool colours give an impression of calm and soothing. Warm colours include the reds, pinks yellows and lighter tints of green. Cool colours are the darker greens, blues, purples and magentas.

E&OE
John.