Paint My Pad Blog

Painting your home, your pad and everything else in between....

Paint Colors – What you need to know about them

Knowing the basics of paint colors can help you get an understanding of how minute changes can result to a new color.

  • Hue – Hue directly translates to color. This term is used most frequently by decorators and refers to the combination of primary colors with different value and intensities.
  • Value – Value directly translates to tint, shade or tone and is determined by how much white, black or gray is added to a pure color. It can also be thought of as “light”, “medium” or “dark”.
  • Intensity – Intensity directly translates to brightness of a color. Unlike value, intensity is better perceived by how bright or dull a color looks. Usually, lower intensity colors are used as main colors and their brighter counterparts are used as accents.
  • Temperature – Temperature refers to the warmth or coolness of a color. Warm colors are those which resemble fire, like red, orange and yellow. Blue and green are cool colors. A combination of warm and cool would be the neutral colors. Temperature affects the mood that a color suggests as well as perception of space.

Color theory

Color is brought about by light reflecting off an object. Three primary colors reflected in varying amounts produce the vast number of colors that we know. White is produced when all three are reflected and black when all three are absorbed.

Primary Colors

The three primary colors are red, blue and yellow. Combining these three makes all other colors.

Secondary Colors

Combining any two of the primary colors in equal amounts would result to the creation of secondary colors. Red combined with blue makes purple. Red combined with yellow makes orange. And blue combined with yellow makes green.

Tertiary Colors

Combining a primary color with a secondary color in equal amounts would result to the creation of tertiary colors. Some examples would be when you add blue (primary) and purple (secondary), this would result to purple with a bluer shade and when you add yellow (primary) to green (secondary) would result in a yellowish green.

Quaternary Colors

Combining a primary color with a tertiary color in equal amounts would result to the creation of quaternary colors.

Most paints would consist of combinations of all three primary colors, and some white and black, in varying amounts. Knowing how all of these colors blend can give you a good idea of what is best for your room.

Share Your Thoughts!

Copyright ©2013. All Rights Reserved.