Cool shades of color

Which colors are warm and which are cool?

Many couturiers presented cold shades in their collections, the colors of which are extremely diverse:

It is known that all chromatic shades can be obtained from three primary ones - red, yellow and blue. Colors with more red and yellow tones are called warm, and those with more blue tones are considered cold. If the shades contain the same amount of warm and cold tones, then they are called neutral.

To understand which tone is warm and which is cold, it is recommended to focus on the clues of the subconscious. For example, if you take such tones as scarlet, berry and crimson, then scarlet will be the warmest, and the other two are perceived as colder colors.

From the foregoing, we can conclude that at the subconscious level we compare all shades with yellow and blue. These tones are responsible for the warmth and coldness of each of the shades.

How to distinguish a warm color from a cold one?

Many fashionistas are interested in: what colors are cold:

There is a simple rule that can always be followed: warm colors are those dominated by yellow, and cold colors are those dominated by blue. For example, if you take a carrot shade, then it has more yellow tones, but in cold red there is more blue pigment.

Consider sunny yellow, which looks very warm, and lemon yellow, which has a bit of green added to it, making it cooler.

Using the cold and warm color chart

The practical application of gradation into cold and warm colors is based in part on human psychology based on several rules of mutual influence:

The definition of "cold" or "warm" occurs only on the basis of one's own psychological experience and a person's stereotype. So, for example, white and blue are associated with ice and snow, so their combination can be considered cold;

Contacting on the same color field of two zones of pronounced warm and cold colors is a mutual equilibrium influence. For example, when blue and red colors come into contact, the first becomes softer, warmer, the second becomes emotionally piercing and tougher;

Mixing color bases with each other with the addition of white allows you to control the visual color temperature.

Note! The table, using the last two points, tries to describe the mechanism of how to make the perception of a hue warmer or colder, since the associative method does not give a 100% result.

The same combination of white and blue in different people can cause completely different associations. For some it's cold blue ice and snow, for others it's hot blue skies around a white sun. Therefore, we switched from psychology to the temperature of the color matrix.

How to change color temperature

The easiest way to illustrate the effect of changing color temperature is with the three most important colors for us, yellow, green, and red.

For a warm yellow color, the temperature can only be increased by adding shades with a lower energy, for example, red, as in the table.

Warmer than basic yellows include, for example, honey yellow, dandelion or sunflower.

To transition to colder tones, add green or blue.

Red is energetically warmer than yellow, so controlling its temperature is more difficult. The gradation of the energy of different shades of red is the most difficult to perceive.

To make the red color colder, you have to shift its background towards purple with the help of blue and gray.

Warming up red is much easier with the addition of yellow.

Green color changes in temperature saturation much easier, since it can be obtained by mixing two components with different temperatures - yellow and blue. The procedure for giving the necessary energy is actually reduced to enhancing one of the color components.

In addition, green is very dependent on saturation. The higher the saturation, the warmer the color field.

shades of red

Adelaide is not only a beautiful female name with French roots. This color was used in their writings by Dostoevsky and Turgenev (the work "Office"). Today, Adelaide is called a red shade of lilac or blue, close to purple.

Purple with a red tint is a shade of hellfire. Also referred to as hellfire or the color of hellfire. Sometimes depicted as pearl red or red and black.

"The color of the thigh of a nymph" sounds playful. This is the name given to pale pink. A direct association leads to the ancient image of nymphs and the invented goddess of the dawn, Aurora. There is a version that the name arose at the beginning of the 19th century when a new variety of roses appeared.

The "color of the market fire" does not have a well-defined hue. Described by people with a good imagination as fiery red with a grayish (yellow-blue) admixture. Its name arose at the end of the 19th century as a memory of a tragic event - a fire in Paris at a charity bazaar. Then, during the tragedy, many people died.

Lingonberry for a long time in Russian denoted the color of a lingonberry leaf - green. Today it is considered a shade of red. Ripe cranberries are deep pink or light red. Interestingly, it was this color that was taken in the description of the banner of Ivan the Terrible.

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Optimism and tragedy merged in the popular shade of the 18th century - "black widow". For some unknown reason, one of the semitones of pink was called that.

cold colors

Warming and cooling shades affect a person in different ways. The blue-green part of the spectrum, which is still defined as colder than the red-yellow, contributes to the emergence of a calm or somewhat melancholy state, bordering on depression in extreme cases. Interiors made in a marine style with a predominant use of blue and white are good for focused work and do not tolerate fuss.

In design and painting, another property is often used: cold colors and shades visually distance objects or details of a picture. That is why a room painted in ice blue or lemon (a cold shade of yellow) will seem more spacious. In such a room it is good in hot weather: it brings coolness with all its appearance.

Interestingly, the sensation of rising and falling temperatures is not only speculative. It is based on changes in the body. It is much easier to freeze in a blue room, and a yellow-orange room helps to warm up. This relationship has been confirmed by several experimental studies.

Creating a color balance

Merging colors with achromatic ones (black, gray, white), gives a gradation of temperatures of the final color, changes shades, tones and adds shadows. So in photography there is the concept of "white balance", which affects the illumination and the final quality of the image.

Neutral white can dilute cool or warm colors. If you add white to orange, you get a slightly colder orange. At the same time, white does not have the magic that can make a cold color out of warm, it only brings it closer to neutral. By the same principle, there is a gradation of color, which loses its temperature saturation when black is added.

In interiors, it is almost impossible to see pure spectral colors, they are “muted” with gray, shaded with black or brightened with white. And of course, they use multicomponent mixtures of chromatic colors.

Teaching children about colors

Based on associations and studies on the impact of color on brain and motor activity, psychologists give their recommendations for children's rooms. The room where the child plays or sleeps should not be painted in bright colors. Red and juicy orange stimulate activity. The child is naturally active, so an additional stimulus is not needed in this case. Dark colors (blue, green, purple) can be overpowering. Therefore, their use is also not recommended.

The color of the children's room should be associated with an ideal childhood. For example, it can be peach, soft light green, muted yellow. Bright accents will be added automatically. Children often draw - their creativity will certainly decorate the room.

Absolute color temperature.

Divide the color wheel into two halves. At the top pole is the warmest color - orange. It is considered the warmest, because it does not have cold shades, later we will consider this property in more detail. At the lower pole is the coldest color - blue. On the sides of the color wheel are the temperature-neutral colors green and magenta. Both are formed by a mixture of cold and warm colors, green - yellow and blue, purple - red and blue. All the colors of the upper half are considered warm, and the lower half are considered cold.

Achromatic colors: white, black and gray are neutral.

Professional use of colors

Reference books containing the names of more than a thousand colors and shades have been published on the Internet. Simple online programs allow the user of the service to independently set the color according to certain parameters. The name is determined automatically. Such catalogs are in demand by people of different professions and are actively used by them.

Cold color palette

If we consider cold colors, their palette is presented in an extraordinary variety. It is realistic to consider those that are most popular and are found everywhere. These are shades from yellow-green to purple. In practice, the separation of "heat" from "cold" occurs as follows:

Determining the color temperature is based on one's own psychological experience and human stereotypes. For example, a white or blue tone is invariably associated only with cold.

If warm and cold colors interact on the same color field, mutual equilibrium influence occurs. If blue is combined with red, then the first becomes softer, and the second hardens.

Mixing color bases with each other with the introduction of white provides an opportunity to adjust the visual temperature of the shade.

The main criterion is temperature associations

Of course, the first thing that can be accepted when discussing the origin of the division into warm colors and cold colors is natural associations. Yellow, red, orange are the colors of the sun, fire. No wonder there is a phrase in Russian that explains the heating of the metal: red-hot. Such temperature changes in color can be seen in a fire or in a fireplace, although some gases during combustion can turn into seemingly cold colors: how not to recall the bluish combustion of household gas fuel. And yet, bluish and bluish colors evoke a logical feeling of coolness: this is the color of the sky, water, ice, snow.

Examples

Orange in any variant is considered warm. Cold shades of flowers are lemon, wine, straw, mint. In each of them you can notice the presence of blue. Honey, olive, cornflower blue and brick, on the contrary, contain an admixture of orange, that is, they are warm colors.

Of course, this division is somewhat arbitrary. The definition of "temperature" remains largely subjective. And as already mentioned, it is easier to calculate the "degree" of a hue if you compare it with another.

Change in color temperature from lightening or darkening

First you need to determine the cold or warm white and black colors?

White is the presence of all colors at the same time, which means that it is the most balanced and neutral in temperature. According to its properties, green tends to it. (We can distinguish a huge number of white shades).

Black is the absence of colors. The shorter the wave, the colder the tone. Black has reached its apogee - its wavelength is 0, but due to the absence of waves, it can also be classified as neutral.

For example, let's take red, which is definitely warm, and consider its light and dark shades.

The warmest will be "pure wave", rich, bright red (which is in the middle).

How is a darker shade of red obtained?

Red is mixed with black - it takes over some of its properties. More precisely, in this case, neutral mixes with warm and cools it. The higher the degree of “dilution” of red with black, the closer the temperature of burgundy is to black, that is, neutral.

How do you get a lighter shade of red (pink)?

White with its neutrality dilutes warm red. Due to this, red loses "amount" of heat, depending on the mixing ratio.

Colors diluted with black or white will never move from the category of warm to cold: they will only approach neutral properties.

There is another way to reduce the pronounced properties of a color close to the spectral one: to add an additional shade to it, when such spectra are mixed, gray is obtained, which can be represented as a product of white + black, in total neutral. For red it will be green.

Colors with unusual names

The names of many colors and shades are often arbitrary, subjective. They can be very different in neighboring cultures. At the same time, different spectral composition can be equally perceived by visual receptors. Scientifically, this is called the color metamerism effect.

The desire of a person to give a name to any process, phenomenon, action or object has led to the fact that many shades have their own names. They can be unusual and very rare in use.

Manicure cold colors

A manicure, to create which the coldest color is used, looks very impressive:

It can be made in blue, green, purple, cool red and many other colors.

Such a manicure is suitable for almost any girl, and it can be supplemented with different prints and abstract patterns, matching (or contrasting) stones, rhinestones, stickers.

It looks interesting French or matte nail design in cold shades.

This kind of manicure can be supplemented with sparkles. A good option is to paint your nails with cold varnish, but cover one with gold or silver varnish.