What is color temperature and what does it affect? The concept of warm and cold colors in color is different from the generally accepted in the study of the exact sciences, it defines not real physical properties, and its perception by a person, the impact on well-being and mood. Although this knowledge is subjective, it has been verified by many years of practice in areas such as art, design or color therapy. In addition to color temperature, stylists and makeup artists work with shade temperature. The temperature of color and shade are often confused, so we will analyze them separately.
Color temperature.
It has long been known about psychological impact colors on people and some animals, especially if large areas are painted. Therefore, to distinguish between warm or cold color relevant when choosing colors for interiors.
This experience is backed by research. It turned out that cold colors lower, and warm ones increase blood circulation. For example, the room was painted in specific color and people were asked to determine the temperature. In rooms painted blue and green, people felt the temperature was 2-3 degrees lower than in a room painted red and orange. It is no coincidence that in everyday life the designations of cold in blue, hot in red on taps with water, thermometers, and other objects. These household designations further fix the temperature-color associations in the mind. Reinforce associations and natural phenomena. Sky, ice, water, have blue shades. The sun, fire, sand are orange.
How to determine warm or cold color?
Color temperature is easy to determine with . It is absolute and relative.
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.
relative temperature. Cold and warm shades of colors.
Understanding relative temperature is important when working with multiple colors and a color palette. It helps, for example, to convey space and volume in an image or surface using color.
In addition to orange and blue, all colors can be both warm and cold relative to others at the same time. Using the color wheel, this is as easy to determine as absolute temperature. Warmth decreases as it approaches the lower pole and blue, for example, red or yellow will be colder than orange, and lemon or magenta will be colder than red and yellow. The same principle works in increasing warmth: cyan and violet will be warmer than blue, turquoise and purple even warmer. Temperature gradations are especially evident in and palettes.
A color can be warm or cold not only in relation to other colors, but also to its own shades.
Cold and warm shades of colors.
With the determination of the shade temperature, difficulties most often arise. Such concepts as cold red or warm red are firmly established in everyday life, but not everyone understands the same thing by them. First, relative hue temperature is often confused with color temperature. Secondly, subjectivity: there is no exact definition of where red begins and ends. Meanwhile, the ability to determine cold and warm tones is important when working with a person’s appearance, for example, determining color types and selecting individual color palettes. This skill can be developed through experience and understanding of a simple principle.
Any color other than orange can have warm, neutral, or cool undertones. How to determine the temperature of a hue using the color wheel?
We take any color and define its boundaries. Then we find the approximate center. Shades of color lying on the side of orange will be warm. On the blue side - cold. Intermediate colors without impurities of warm or cold are called local or neutral.
Let's start with green. It is formed by warm yellow and cold blue colors. Cold or warm green tint is obtained due to the predominance of blue or yellow. Moving up to yellow, we get warm shades, down to blue - cold.
The same principle applies to other colors, such as yellow. Approaching orange, the color warms up. Going down, yellow acquires a greenish, lemony, cold hue. Neutral yellow does not have a clear greenish or orange cast.
The orange color stands out in particular. This is the warmest and only color that does not have cold undertones. In addition, it spreads warmth to the surroundings. The nearest colors: yellow-orange and orange-red are also exceptionally warm.
Red. The same principle applies here: the upper shades, highlighted by yellow, are warm, the lower ones from the purple side are cold.
Purple itself is neutral, like green, it is formed by a mixture of cold and warm colors. A large proportion of red makes it warm, blue - cold. From the point of view of use in warm or cold scales, this is a rather complex color. The differences between warm purple and cool red or cool purple and violet are difficult to distinguish. It is also difficult to isolate the local magenta color.
The same boundary difficulties apply to purple. When adding red, it warms up, blue - it gets colder.
The difficulty in determining the temperature of a shade is that there are no exact and generally accepted distinctions where the warm shade of one color ends and the cold shade of another begins. There are no clear boundaries and local shades. Usually, when we are dealing with primary colors: red, blue, yellow and green, this division is intuitive, experience helps to distinguish between other colors.
The blue color is the coldest of the entire palette, it is the opposite of orange. But if orange makes neighboring colors exceptionally warm and does not have cold shades, then blue does not have similar properties. It is conditionally possible to distinguish warm Blue colour. Some people think that blue, by definition, cannot be warm, but a warm range of colors can contain blue, if you choose its right shade. Its cold, they are local shades are located in the middle, and warm at the edges: on the one hand, blue is highlighted with yellow, on the other, with red. These shades will be warmer relative to cold blue.
Blue-green colors stand out separately. Here, warmth-coldness is conditional and depends on whether they are singled out in a separate group with their own local color or considered as part of green and blue shades.
So, we come to the influence of lightness and saturation on the color temperature. Up to this point, we have considered the properties of warmth-coldness on pure colors and one parameter - tone. But this is not enough, since most often you have to deal with complex colors in which there is an admixture of achromatic, that is, take into account all three parameters. Lightness changes with the addition of white and black, saturation - with the addition of gray.
Temperature of achromatic colors.
Pure are neutral. However, in nature it is difficult to find absolutely neutral gray, white or black, they always have an advantage in one direction. So, cold or warm white color is obtained from the admixture of other tones. Yellow-red make it warm, blue make it cold. The same applies to gray and black.
Temperature of mixed colors.
For clarity, it will be convenient here to return to and look at its vertical slice. Along the edges are the cold and warm poles of the color wheel, in the center are neutral colors. Moving from the extreme temperature characteristics to the middle, the color approaches the opposite pole and is thereby neutralized. In other words, as saturation decreases, lightness increases or decreases, the color will mix with neutral achromats and become neutral itself.
Warm group - reds, yellows become less warm, their diluted shades seem colder.
Dilution with gray and black most quickly changes the character of light yellow and lemon shades, they seem greenish and cold.
Orange color does not acquire cold shades, but becomes more neutral. With dilution, it quickly ceases to be recognizable and turns into brown.
Blues and purples with the addition of white and gray lose their cold properties and seem warmer.
As you can see, with the help of the color wheel it is easy to distinguish cold shades from warm ones. Difficulties arise with the definition of blue-red and blue-green shades, it all depends on which color is considered local. Complex and mixed colors more difficult than pure ones in determining heat-coldness. Here it is necessary to distinguish nuances and see how the same tone changes along with lightness and saturation.
As mentioned earlier, colors have three characteristics
- one of the pair.
warm-cold
soft - bright
light - saturated
Today we will focus on the distinction warm and cold colors
First, let's deal with chromatic flowers
For clarity, look again at the color wheel:
As you remember, all chromatic colors can be made up of three primary colors - red , yellow and blue .
Red and yellow psychologically perceived by us as warm colors because they are associated with fire and the sun.
Blue psychologically perceived by us as a cold color, because it is associated with water and ice.
Accordingly, those colors in which red and yellow predominate are considered warm (Orange , red , yellow), the same ones in which blue color predominates ( blue , blue, lilac), are considered cold .
Those colors that contain an equal amount of warm and cold colors ( green= yellow + blue, violet= blue+red) are usually considered neutral.
Now back to the fact that all secondary and tertiary colors consist of two chromatic colors in different proportions (when a third is added, gray shade, but we will not delve into it for now). The color that prevails usually determines color, tone (overtone).
However, in coloring, another color, which is part of the shade, is also important. This color is called semitone (undertone)
. Midtones make colors within the same hue "warm" and "cold"
. For example, warm red and cold red. Cold semitones - blue. Warm undertones - yellow and red. At orange color there are no cold undertones - this is the only absolutely warm color.
Here are examples of warm and cold shades of the same color:
The first column is warm halftones, the second is cold halftones.
Usually, when it comes to color combinations, they combine colors with the same halftone. In the theory of color types, cold and warm colors mean just colors with cold and warm undertones.
General rules for combining colors depending on the halftone:
Colors with the same halftone blend well. Colors with different tones do not blend well, however, in clothing they can sometimes be combined in small quantities to create accents.
Compare:
1 picture - cold purple
(semitone blue) + cold green
(semitone blue) - harmoniously
2 picture - cold purple
(semitone blue)+ warm green
(semitone yellow) - disharmony
In nature, colors with one semitone are usually combined.
Cold halftones : cool blue, light blue, cool bright red, burgundy, cool green, light gray.
Warm undertones : warm yellow, yellow-orange, clay red, warm green, olive, marsh
Now, as regards achromatic colors :
Pure black, white and grey are considered cold colors - they harmonize well with them.
Medium gray can sometimes act as a neutral color, due to the fact that it is a combination of two opposite colors.
Our world has never been monochrome, it contains a huge number of tones and color transitions. Experts say that a person can distinguish about two percent of the shades of what is available to the eyes of birds and some insects. Instead of the outdated and imperfect system of decomposing white light into seven basic color bands, artists, designers and makeup artists have developed their own table of warm and cold colors, because for painting and coloring, the energy of perception, tone and shades have long become more important than the color itself.
Why do we need a color chart
To be precise, the seven basic, fundamental colors in nature exist only in our perception for our vision. Coloring really proved that for the human eye there are only three basic color components - yellow, red and blue, plus an additional white. Any color or shade can be obtained from these three components, and the addition of more or less hot than the background color can make it warm or cold.
In the colorist, there is a clear division of colors into three groups:
- Warm tones include yellow, red and orange;
- The cold group includes blue, cyan, violet;
- Green can be equally attributed to both warm and cold, but, according to experts, green color is a relative of white, that is, completely balanced.
Note! Such a division into warm and cold is rather arbitrary; it would be easier to use the concept of free energy. But the problem is that the shades of warm and cold content must be systematized and, most importantly, selected for compatibility, based on the perception of a person, and not on the basis of these devices.
A person does not have additional sense organs with which one could try the shade “on the tooth”, only the receptor sensation of heat and cold remains, which we are trying to use when classifying into cold and hot bases.
Using the cold and warm color chart
Practical application of gradation to cold and warm colors based in part on human psychology on the basis of 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 different people can evoke 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 warm yellow color You can only increase the temperature by adding shades with 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. Energy gradation different shades red is perceived the most difficult.
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.
The concepts of "warm" and "cold tones" are widely used in a wide variety of areas of life and especially in art. Almost all books related to painting, fashion or interior design mention color shades. But the authors mainly dwell on the fact that the execution of a work of art in one tone or another. Since the concepts of warm and cold colors are widespread, they require more detailed and careful consideration.
Arnheim's theory
There is one theory created by R. Arnheim that explains warm and cold tones as a phenomenon. According to this theory, any shade can be both warm and cold. If any color deviates in the direction of another, then it may become different in terms of heat load than it was at the beginning. For example, yellow or red with a touch of blue will look cold, while yellow and blue with a hint of red will look warm. From this we can conclude: an initially warm color with an admixture of a cold shade will also become cold. But this theory is not undisputed. After all, you need to take into account the entire system where a particular color is located. Everyone can become warm or cold, depending on what admixture is added to it. In painting, the shade is considered more important than the color itself. After all, the original pure color always looks strictly and impartially.
Saturation and severity
Color "temperature" also depends on saturation. If the color has optimal saturation, then it will always look colder than a less saturated tone. Beauty, in which everything is observed with rigor, is characterized as cold. Architecture, where geometric proportion and clarity are clearly expressed, strict symmetry of form, is always called cold. And vice versa, if errors, fuzziness, deviations from rigor are noticeable in any work of art, then it is considered warmer, spiritualized, close to everything earthly.
Color purity
Considering warm and cold tones, one must also take into account the concept of color purity. There are some tones that are traditionally considered mixed, for example, yellow or orange. Therefore, it is necessary to learn to determine the main pure colors that other shades can form by mixing. The predominance of red or blue is an indication of the temperature of the mixed hue. If the color approaches red, it is considered warm, and if it approaches blue, it is considered cold. We can say with confidence that in painting the concept of warmth and coldness of color does not carry any meaning. It is important to divide the shades into “colder” or “warmer”.
Lightness and its effect on color temperature
First you need to determine what colors are black and white. It is believed that white denotes all colors at the same time, that is, it contains all existing shades. Balance and temperature neutrality are the main qualities of white. Interestingly, to white color green is closest in properties. The absence of color means black. It does not have its own color wave, where shades are indicated from light to dark.
dark cold
Dark cold tones always remind a person of the winter cold. These include green, blue, purple, lilac. These colors and some of their shades look cold if they are not too saturated. They also have a slightly ashy hue. The main thing in a cold color is the absence of a red tint, which is traditionally considered warm.
Light cold
Light cold tones include pink, blue, light green. They are not saturated and not too bright. When looking at such a tone, there is a feeling of cold and the breath of winter. If there is more yellow in the color, then it will turn into a warm range of shades, and if blue - into a cold one.
How to determine what tone is right for a person?
To find out what color and its tone will suit a person, the main thing is to determine the shade of his skin. Cold and contrasting winter colors will go to someone, to another - bright colors spring, the luminous warmth of summer. For yellowish skin with a golden hue, it is better to choose. A combination with cold colors can be unsuccessful, as the skin will take on a sickly yellow appearance. If the complexion has a slight grayish undertone and casts a little blue, then a person will always look to win by choosing cold tones. Against the background of warm shades, the skin will look faded and may even lose its healthy appearance. When determining suitable tones, a person must also take into account contrast. Some people don't go saturated and bright colors, because against their background the personality can simply be lost. In this case, you need to stop at gentle and calm color schemes. They will help emphasize the type of face and skin, make a person more noticeable and brighter.
Looking dignified and confident is easy
Will become excellent choice for people who belong to the winter type. That is, for those who have fair skin, pronounced eyes and not faded hair. For example, cool shades of blue, red and green are suitable for people with a dark shade of hair. They emphasize the virtues and hide the flaws. The person will look memorable and will be able to stand out from the crowd.
Owners of light hair should focus on such cold tones as purple, blue, light red. They will become indispensable assistants if a person wants to look confident and beautiful. Such colors set off blond hair and enable a person to be bright and outstanding. People will pay attention not to a person's clothes, but to his face, which is very important, for example, when applying for a job. Defining your tone, which will help and emphasize dignity, is extremely important. To look great and always be on top is the desire of everyone. The main thing is to be able to use colors and their shades correctly.
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