Color harmony
Why do colors look good together? Old rules say geometry. Lab studies say similar hues, different lightness.
- Two kinds (Chevreul)
- Analogy and contrast
- Lab finding
- Similar hues read as harmonious
Color harmony is the sense that colors belong together. For centuries it was taught as geometry on the color wheel: neighbors (analogous), opposites (complementary), three evenly spaced hues (triadic), or a color plus the two neighbors of its opposite (split complementary).
Chevreul split harmony into two kinds in 1839: harmonies of analogy, colors that are alike, and harmonies of contrast, colors that oppose. Johannes Itten at the Bauhaus built 'color chords' of two, three or four hues on his wheel. Josef Albers, who studied and then taught there, distrusted fixed rules and trained students to judge by eye in Interaction of Color.
What does research say? In 2011 Karen Schloss and Stephen Palmer had people rate many pairs of colors. Both liking and harmony went up as the two hues got more similar, which backs Chevreul's harmony of analogy. Liking also went up when the two colors differed in lightness: a pale sage with a deep hunter green. People also agreed more on what looked harmonious than on what they liked.
A practical rule that survives: vary value more than hue. One or two hues at several lightnesses usually reads as calm and deliberate. Whistler even titled his mother's portrait an 'Arrangement in Grey and Black' (Whistler's Mother): almost no hue at all, and perfectly composed.
Designers also learn harmony from examples. The best-loved collection is A Dictionary of Color Combinations, drawn from the Japanese painter Sanzo Wada's pattern books of the 1930s and reissued in 2010: page after page of tested pairs and trios, with no rules attached.
Swatches
- Similar hue...
- ...different lightness
- Triad · blue
- Triad · red
- Triad · yellow
Colors
Sources
- Schloss, K. B. & Palmer, S. E. (2011). Aesthetic response to color combinations: preference, harmony, and similarity. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics 73(2): 551–571.
- Palmer, S. E., Schloss, K. B. & Sammartino, J. (2013). Visual aesthetics and human preference. Annual Review of Psychology 64: 77–107.
- Chevreul, M. E. (1839). De la loi du contraste simultané des couleurs. Paris.
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