Color Wheels
A color wheel is an illustrative organization of colors around a circle,showing the relationships between primary colors, secondary colors, and tertiary colors.
Three Important Color Wheels
How many ways can you rearrange the rainbow?
RGB
Red, Green, Blue
RYB
Red, Yellow, Blue
The RGB Color Wheel
The RGB (Red, Green, Blue) color wheel represents the 3 light sources used to produce colors on a TV or computer screen.
Primary colors are Red, Green, and Blue.
Secondary colors are created by mixing primary colors:
Red and Green= Yellow
Green and Blue = Cyan
Blue and Red = Magenta
The 12 Main Colors of RGB:
| RED #FF0000 (255,0,0) | #FF8000 (255,128,0) | YELLOW #FFFF00 (255,255,0) | #80FF00 (128,255,0) | GREEN #00FF00 (0,255,0) | #00FF80 (0,255,128) |
| CYAN #00FFFF (0,255,255) | #0080FF (0,128,255) | BLUE #0000FF (0,0,255) | #8000FF (128,0,255) | MAGENTA #FF00FF (255,0,255) | #FF0080 (255,0,128) |
RGB Green is different from the HTML color named Green.
RGB Green is different from the HTML color named Green.
The CMY(K) Color Wheel
The CMY(K) (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow) represent the colors used to print on paper.
The primary colors are Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow.
Secondary colors are created by mixing primary colors:
Cyan and Magenta = Blue
Magenta and Yellow = Red
Yellow and Cyan = Green.
The 12 Main Colors of CYM:
| CYAN #00FFFF (0,255,255) | #0080FF (0,128,255) | BLUE #0000FF (0,0,255) | #8000FF (128,0,255) | MAGENTA #FF00FF (255,0,255) | #FF0080 (255,0,128) |
| RED #FF0000 (255,0,0) | #FF8000 (255,128,0) | YELLOW #FFFF00 (255,255,0) | #80FF00 (128,255,0) | GREEN #00FF00 (0,255,0) | #00FF80 (0,255,128) |
The RYB Color Wheel
The RYB (Red, Yellow, Blue) color wheel is used by painters, artists and designers for blending pigment colors.
The 3 primary colors are Red, Yellow, and Blue.
Secondary colors are created by mixing primary colors.
The 3 secondary colors are Orange, Green, and Purple.
Red and Yellow = Orange
Yellow and Blue = Green
Blue and Red = Purple.
The tertiary colors are made by mixing two secondary colors.
The 6 tertiary colors are Red-Orange, Yellow-Orange, Yellow-Green, Blue-Green, Blue-Purple, Red-Purple
The 12 Main Colors of RYB:
| RED #FE2712 | R-O #FC600A | ORANGE #FB9902 | Y-O #FCCC1A | YELLOW #FEFE33 | Y-G #B2D732 |
| GREEN #66B032 | B-G #347C98 | BLUE #0247FE | B-P #4424D6 | PURPLE #8601AF | R-P #C21460 |
RYB is the best color wheel to identify the colors that go well together.
The RYB wheel can be used to create pleasing color schemes for the web.
You will learn more about color schemes in the chapter ofColor Schemes.
