Color Wheel basics to create your own palette

The color wheel portrays the relationship among the three primary colors of red, blue and yellow. The three secondary colors that result from mixing tow primary colors are purple, green and orange. Tertiary colors are derived by mixing a primary with a secondary color, which simply brings a greater focus of one primary color over the other.

There is an entire vocabulary associated with the color wheel, but rather than go through that, here's what you really want to focus on... Related or analogous color schemes usually combine three neighboring colors from the color wheel. These schemes can be warm or cool, since the colors are adjacent on the color wheel and therefore usually share these attributes. Complementary color schemes use two colors opposite each other on the color wheel. These schemes are bold and often intriguing. They can be difficult to pull off because the contrasts are bold and placing them side by side makes them seem more intense, but they can be effective if done properly. Mixing complementary colors tends to relax the eye because the colors move toward gray. This is often seen with traditional modern color schemes. Triadic schemes are based on three colors equally spaced around the color wheel, such as red, yellow and blue. These can be the most sophisticated, since the relationships among the colors are the most abstract. Experiment with intensity and values in a triadic color scheme for the best results. A red, yellow and blue scheme with all colors of the same intensity might seem too bright, but deep red and navy blue with pale yellow or deep gold used as an accent might work fine.