Tertiary colors (also known as intermediate colors) are colors made by combining a primary color with a secondary color adjacent to it on the color wheel. For example, red and yellow make orange, and orange combined with yellow makes yellow-orange. Tertiary colors provide more variety and nuance than just the primary and secondary colors.
Primary Colors
The primary colors are red, blue, and yellow. These are called primary colors because they cannot be created by mixing other colors together. All other colors are derived from some combination of these 3 primary colors.
| Color | Wavelength (nm) |
|---|---|
| Red | 700-635 |
| Blue | 490-450 |
| Yellow | 585-580 |
The primary colors correspond to specific wavelengths of light. When all 3 primary colors are mixed together equally, they produce white light. The primary colors form the corners of the color wheel.
Secondary Colors
The secondary colors are created by mixing two primary colors equally. The secondary colors are green, orange, and purple.
Green is made by mixing blue and yellow.
Orange is made by mixing red and yellow.
Purple is made by mixing red and blue.
The secondary colors fall between the primary colors on the color wheel.
| Secondary Color | Mixed From |
|---|---|
| Green | Blue + Yellow |
| Orange | Red + Yellow |
| Purple | Red + Blue |
Tertiary Colors
Tertiary colors are made by mixing a primary color with a secondary color next to it on the color wheel. For example:
– Red mixed with orange makes red-orange
– Yellow mixed with green makes yellow-green
– Blue mixed with purple makes blue-purple
There are 6 main tertiary colors:
| Tertiary Color | Made From |
|---|---|
| Red-orange | Red + Orange |
| Yellow-orange | Yellow + Orange |
| Yellow-green | Yellow + Green |
| Blue-green | Blue + Green |
| Blue-purple | Blue + Purple |
| Red-purple | Red + Purple |
These 6 tertiary colors fill in the gaps between the primary and secondary colors on the color wheel.
More Variations
In addition to the main tertiary colors, many more variations can be created by adjusting the ratios of the two mixed colors.
For example:
– More yellow and less orange makes a yellower shade of orange
– More red and less purple makes a redder shade of purple
So there are infinite tertiary color possibilities, allowing for very subtle and precise variations of hue.
Designers and artists mix tertiary colors by eye to achieve the perfect nuance for their project. Color mixing charts and digital tools can also help visualize and pinpoint tertiary color shades.
Benefits of Tertiary Colors
Some key benefits that tertiary colors provide:
– More diverse and nuanced palette to work with
– Smoother color transitions and gradations
– Ability to fine-tune hue and saturation
– Bridge gaps between primaries and secondaries
Without tertiary colors, only having the 6 main hues would feel very limited and disjointed. Tertiary colors help connect and fill in the color spectrum.
Color Harmony
Tertiary colors are extremely useful for creating color schemes and harmonious palettes.
Some examples:
– Analogous colors – using adjacent colors on the wheel like red, red-orange, orange, yellow-orange
– Triadic colors – colors evenly spaced around the wheel like purple, orange, green
– Tetradic/double complementary – two sets of complementary colors like purple, yellow-orange, blue-green, red-orange
Tertiary colors allow color designers to precisely tune color harmony. For example, instead of using pure red and pure yellow for a complementary scheme, softening it to red-orange and yellow-green can give a more subtle, sophisticated look.
Transitions and Gradients
Tertiary colors also create more seamless transitions between other colors. Mixing a tertiary between two primaries or secondaries helps the colors naturally bleed into each other.
For example, a background transition from cyan to magenta can be smoothed by inserting shades of blue-purple in between.
This technique is used extensively in all kinds of design – illustrations, data visualizations, web gradients, etc. It prevents disjointed or jarring jumps between colors.
Shades and Tints
In color theory, a “shade” is any color mixed with black, while a “tint” is a color mixed with white. Tertiary colors provide a starting point to then make darker and lighter shades and tints.
For example, the tertiary red-orange can be shaded down towards maroon or tinted up towards peach. This creates extended color families that still retain subtle relationships.
Using shades and tints of tertiary colors is a great way to build out a monochromatic palette with lots of built-in cohesion.
Unifying Design Elements
Because tertiary colors naturally bridge primary and secondary colors, they do an excellent job of pulling multiple design elements together into a cohesive whole.
For example, a website design might use primary colors for headers, secondary colors for borders, and tertiary colors for backgrounds that tie them together.
Or a painting having tertiary greens reflect colors from both the yellow sun and blue water to unify the composition.
This harmonizing effect makes tertiary colors extremely useful for all kinds of design work and color balancing.
Subtle and Muted Tones
Compared to primary and secondary hues, tertiary colors have lower chroma and intensity. Mixing in a neighboring color neuters and desaturates the original color.
This creates a range of more subtle, muted tertiary tones. These are very useful for conveying natural or earthy aesthetics vs bright, bold hues.
For example, a forest scene may rely heavily on greens softened with yellow like olive and moss green to feel more organic. Or neutered down oranges and browns for natural wood and leather textures.
When a design requires lower color impact, tertiary shades can provide that without sacrificing interesting color variety.
Gradual Color Changes
In nature, color changes happen gradually and smoothly, not in abrupt jumps. Tertiary colors replicate these subtle gradients.
Consider an ocean sunset transitioning from day to night. It moves incrementally through gradients of orange, peach, pink, purple, navy, and black.
Or the changing colors of fall leaves passing through various tertiary shades as chlorophyll breaks down.
Tertiary colors mimic the fluid, multi-step color transitions found everywhere in the natural world.
Bridging to Neutrals
Pure grays are considered neutral colors in design since they are pure mixtures of black and white.
Tertiary colors act as bridges between colorful hues and neutral shades. For example blue mixing towards gray has tertiary phases like slate blue and blue-gray along the way.
So tertiaries can aid that transition process of dulling down colors by incrementally removing saturation.
Flesh Tones and Skin Palettes
When mixing paint or digital colors to represent skin, tertiary mixes are essential for realistic results.
No single primary or secondary color can capture the diversity and nuance of human skin tones. Tertiary mixes like peach, tan, beige, etc. provide that necessary range.
Makeup and fashion designers also rely heavily on tertiary colors to complement and match with different complexions and outfits.
Children’s Toys and Media
Colors for young children are often chosen to be soft, soothing, and inviting. Bright primary hues can feel too loud and aggressive for child development.
Infant and toddler products favor pastel versions of tertiary colors like mint, lavender, baby blue. These feel playful yet still gentle on developing eyes and senses.
In children’s shows and books, tertiary colors help create approachable worlds that feel safe and calming for kids. Bright primaries are used more sparingly for highlighting key objects and actions.
Food Presentation
The colors and arrangement of food have a huge impact on perceived freshness and appetite appeal.
Tertiary colors are prevalent in photography of appetizing dishes since they mimic natural food coloring. For example, subtle orange shades on cooked meat, green-yellow gradients on veggies, and red-purple garnishes.
Food stylists carefully employ tertiary colors to make dishes look irresistible and emphasize fresh ingredients. Vibrant primaries and secondaries can look unnatural and unappetizing in comparison.
Camouflage Patterns
Effective camouflage relies heavily on tertiary mixes that blend into natural backgrounds and break up outlines.
Patterns use soft gradients of browns, greens, grays to disappear against trees, bushes, dirt, etc. Hard edges of primary colors would stand out instead of hiding.
Biology provides the best inspirations for this through animal colorations. Fish, frogs, birds, insects all evolved tertiary tones to camouflage with their native environments.
Avoiding Clashes
Some color combinations, like red and orange, or yellow and violet, are so intense they seem to vibrate against each other. This makes them difficult to look at for long periods.
Introducing tertiary colors helps prevent these types of jarring clashes. So red mixed towards maroon plays better with orange diluted towards peach.
Knocking down the color intensity provides breathing room between highly contrasting hues. This improves harmony and accessibility for color schemes.
Accessibility and Inclusivity
Considering color blindness and visual impairment accessibility is important for good design. Certain color combinations can be difficult or impossible to distinguish for those with vision diversity.
Tertiary colors can provide more options that work for wider audiences. For example soft blues may be preferable over reds and greens for color blindness. Low contrast tertiaries also aid low vision viewers.
Printing and Pigments
When ink mixes on paper, tertiary colors emerge naturally even if not intended originally. For example, cyan and magenta overlap produces shades of blue and purple.
Understanding these printing interactions allows designers to anticipate results and adjust digital files accordingly. Preview prints help reveal tertiary effects.
With paints and dyes, the sheer mixing of pigments also generates tertiaries. Painters blend adjacent pigments wet into wet on the canvas to utilize this.
Digital Screens
On RGB displays like phones and monitors, tertiary colors arise from combining light of the primary red, green, and blue elements in each pixel.
By digitally adjusting those RGB values, vast tertiary ranges are possible. But some hues still fall outside the color gamut a screen can reproduce compared to real pigments.
Displaying and editing photos relies heavily on tertiary colors capturing nuanced tonality for realistic results straight out of the camera.
Conclusion
Tertiary colors fill in the gaps between primary and secondary hues to complete the color wheel with smooth, diverse transitions. They open up color possibilities through endless mixing variations and combinations.
Without tertiaries, design and art would be far more limited, disjointed, and much less able to reflect the subtle gradients found in nature. Tertiary colors provide the nuanced bridges that unite and harmonize any palette.
Their lower chroma allows calmer, more accessible tones as well as natural mimicking for things like skin, food, and environments. And digitally, tertiaries lend important blending needed for gradients, photo editing, printing, and screens.
For all these reasons, tertiary colors offer vast benefits for coloring our visual world accurately and beautifully. They take primary pigments and discharge them into a full spectrum reflecting the complexity around us.