Color. It plays a fundamental role in design and everyday life. It can draw your attention to an image… evoke a certain mood or emotion… even communicate something important without using words at all. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay So how do we know which colors go well together and which don't? The answer is simple: color theory. Artists and designers have followed color theory for centuries, but anyone can learn more. It can help you feel confident in many different situations, whether it's choosing colors for a pattern or putting together the perfect outfit. All it takes is a little intuition and you'll see color in a whole new way. Let's start at the beginning with a refresher on the basics. Do you remember learning the primary and secondary colors in school? Then you already have some knowledge of color theory. Red and yellow make orange; yellow and blue give green; and blue and red make purple. If we mix these colors together, we get even more intermediate shades, such as red-orange and yellow-green. All together they form what is called the color wheel. (You can probably see where it gets its name.) Now, let's take it a step further with hue, saturation, and value. These are terms you may not encounter in everyday life, but they are key to understanding more nuanced colors, like all those little paint chips at the home improvement store. The shade is the simplest; it's basically just another word for "color." Saturation refers to intensity, in other words, whether the color appears softer or more vibrant. The value has to do with how dark or light the color is, ranging from black to white. As you can see, this gives us many different shades, from a deep reddish brown... to a light pastel pink. So how do we put all of this together to create professional looking color schemes? There are actually tried and true formulas based on something called color harmony that can help. All you need is the color wheel. The simplest formula for harmony is monochromatic because it uses only one color or hue. Simply pick a point on the color wheel and use your knowledge of saturation and value to create variations. The best thing about monochromatic color schemes is that they are guaranteed to match. An analogous color scheme uses colors that are next to each other on the wheel, like red and orange... or cooler colors, like blue and green. Don't be afraid to play with the palette and create your own unique interpretation. That's what these formulas really are: starting points to guide and inspire you. Complementary colors are opposite each other on the wheel; for example blue and orange... or the classic red and green. To avoid overly simplistic complementary color schemes, add some variety by introducing lighter, darker, or desaturated tones. A split complementary color scheme uses the colors on both sides of the complementary. This gives you the same level of contrast, but more colors to work with (and potentially more interesting results). A triadic color scheme uses three equally spaced colors, forming a perfect triangle on the wheel. These combinations tend to be quite striking, especially with primary or secondary colors, so be careful when using them in your work. Tetradic color schemes form a rectangle on the wheel, using not one but two complementary color pairs. This formula works best if you let one color dominate while the others!