I've finally almost finished my course in
interior design studies, so I though I might as well
node my homework for the final
exam. One topic was the 7 basic
colour schemes, not to be confused with the 8
colour contrasts. These
schemes are based on the colour wheel, which is a circle with 12 colours in this case.
yellow
YO YG
orange green
OR BG
red blue
RP BP
purple
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Monochromatic: one colour, but used in different
tints,
shades and materials (a light blue stainless steel chair gives another impression than a fluffy dark blue
chaise lounge so it's not neccesarily boring).
-
Complementary: two colours opposite in the colour wheel are combined. Red with green, blue with orange etc. Normally one colour dominates the scheme.
-
Analogous: 2 or 3 colours adjacent in the wheel. E.g. green, blue-green (BG) and blue.
-
Split complementary: one hue (pure colour) + two hues on either side of the
complementary hue. Purple with yellow-orange (YO) and yellow-green (YG).
-
Triad or triadic: three hues equidistant around the circle. Like orange, green and purple. This may not sound very compelling to you, but especially
children tend to like those fresh combinations.
-
Double complementary: is based upon two pairs of complementary hues. This combination, like OR+red+BG+green is often used, because it is a safe and
balanced combination.
-
Tetrad: is like triad, but then based on 4 hues at equidistance in the colour wheel. This combination is considered as the one most difficult to combine.
Ah well,
designers may talk in vague blahblah terms, but that's what every
industry branch does. After all, when you keep things
unclear you have an advantage that the client thinks s/he really needs you
to get something done very well.
Back to
colour theory