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Create Cool Color Palettes with Color Wheel

No more guessing which colors go together. Use LogoDesign.Net’s color wheel chart to generate stunning palettes for your next project. Pick from a variety of color schemes and start designing right away. Ideal for designers, marketers, and small business owners, it’s easy and free!

  • Create pro-level palettes
  • Explore endless color combos
  • Generate stunning schemes in minutes
  • Ideal for digital and print
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What Is the Color Wheel?

Colors tint our emotions and play a powerful role in how we communicate through design. The color wheel theory is a visual guide that helps you understand the difference between colors and how they work together to create harmony, contrast, or impact. Color wheel is a tool used by artists, designers, and marketers to create beautiful color palettes for everything from branding to digital graphics.

The concept dates back to 1666 when Sir Isaac Newton first organized colors into a circle to demonstrate their relationships. Today, that idea still stands strong in the form of modern RGB and RYB color wheels, each used for different mediums.


RYB (Red, Yellow, Blue)

Common in traditional art and painting, this color wheel spinner helps you mix pigments effectively.

RGB (Red, Green, Blue)

Used for digital and screen-based designs, this color wheel refers to mixing light, like on a computer or TV screen.



The Colors on the Wheel

In color theory, colors are arranged on a wheel and grouped into three main categories: primary, secondary, and tertiary. This color theory wheel acts as a visual guide or toolbox for artists, designers, and creatives to make informed color choices.

It features 12 core hues (three primary, three secondary, and six tertiary) that form the foundation for understanding color relationships. These hues are grouped based on how they’re created and how they interact with one another to craft balanced and visually appealing designs. The color wheel is an essential tool in any creative’s arsenal.


Primary Colors

Primary colors are the building blocks of all colors that can’t be made by mixing other colors together. The color wheel has three primary colors.

  • RYB: Red, Yellow, Blue
  • RGB: Red, Green, Blue
Secondary Colors

Secondary colors combine two primary colors in equal parts to create a new, distinct color. There are three secondary colors in the color wheel.

  • RYB: Orange, Green, Purple
  • RGB: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow
Tertiary Colors

Tertiary colors blend one primary color with a nearby secondary color to create a more complex hue. The color wheel has six tertiary colors.

  • RYB: Red-Orange, Yellow-Orange, Yellow-Green, Blue-Violet, Blue-Green, Red-Violet
  • RGB: Azure, Violet, Rose, Spring Green, Chartreuse Green, Orange

The color wheel can also be split into warm and cool colors, often referred to as a color’s temperature. According to color psychology, choosing the right temperature can influence how people feel when they see your work. Great color palettes often balance both warm and cool tones to create contrast, emotion, and visual interest in your design.


Warm Colors

Warm colors range from red to yellow. They’re often linked to energy and warmth, like the sun.

Cool Colors

Cool colors span blue to green and purple. These shades tend to feel calm, soothing, and refreshing, like the water.



Create Beautiful Color Schemes

Before starting a design project, most professionals put together a color scheme – a mix of hues that feel right for the brand, business, or mood. You can build one from scratch, but usually, it starts with a base color or two, then expands into a complete palette.

This is where our color spin wheel comes in handy. It’s a creative shortcut to building combinations that feel balanced and intentional. Use the color wheel to find color harmonies based on the rules of color combinations.


Monochromatic Colors

A subtle, cohesive mix of three shades, tones, and tints of a single color. This approach creates a unified look that’s easy on the eyes, perfect for professional, minimal designs, or calming aesthetics, such as Red-Orange, Orange, and Yellow-Orange.

Complementary Colors

Complementary colors, such as yellow and purple, sit directly across from each other on the colorful wheel spinner. When these colors are used together, they deliver strong contrast and high energy, great for calls to action or highlights.

Analogous Colors

Three colors that sit side by side on the color wheel, like Blue, Blue-Green, and Green – naturally harmonious and easy to work with. To avoid overwhelming the eye, pick one dominant shade and let the others subtly support your design.

Triad Colors

These are three hues evenly placed (120º) around the wheel and offer a vibrant yet balanced feel. Triadic combos like Red, Blue, and Yellow give your design energy without clashing, making it ideal for playful visuals with personality.

Split Colors

This scheme uses the two colors beside a base color’s complement. If Blue is your base, its split-complementary pair would be Red-Orange and Yellow-Orange. Split colors offer strong visual contrast like complementary colors, but with less tension.

Compound Colors

A compound color scheme mixes one base color with two adjacent hues to its complement. It’s similar to split-complementary, but often refers more broadly to non-primary pairings that balance warm and cool tones, like Teal with Red-Orange and Mauve.

Tetradic Colors

A group of four colors spaced evenly across the wheel, such as Red, Orange, Green, and Blue. This is a bold palette, and it takes a little finesse to get right. The best practice is to let one color lead, and use the others for accents or variety.

Square Colors

A square color scheme uses four evenly spaced hues (90º) on the wheel, like Red, Green, Blue-Violet, and Yellow-Orange, forming a square or diamond shape. This color scheme offers a bold contrast with balance. It is ideal for energetic visuals and striking designs.

Double Split Colors

A double split-complementary scheme uses two base colors and the two colors next to each of their complements, forming an X shape on the color wheel. This combo gives hues that balance warmth and coolness without overwhelming your design.



Color Mixing Techniques to Add Depth

Shades, tints, and tones bring richness and variation to a base color.

Playing with color doesn’t stop at just picking a hue. You can shift a color’s mood and intensity by creating shades, tints, and tones, and it’s easier than you’d think. A simple tweak to one hue can shift the vibe. Depth, contrast, or subtlety? Just play with shades, tints, and tones. Let’s break these down and see how they change the feel of your palette.

Shade

Add black to your base color, and you’ll get a darker, richer version of it. Shades bring drama but can easily overpower, so use them wisely.

Tint

Add white to your hue to lighten things up. Tints soften bold colors and help balance vivid palettes without losing personality.

Tone

Mix in grey (a little black and white) to get a toned-down, more sophisticated version of your hue. Tones are versatile and work well across many designs.



Color Attributes That Define Every Color

Hue, saturation, and luminance shape how we see and feel color.

Every color you see carries a unique character, shaped by a mix of three key attributes. These attributes influence how colors look and how they make us feel. Understanding hue, saturation, and luminance helps you choose colors with purpose. Let’s break down what each one means and how they work together.

Hue

Hue is just the pure color itself; it can be any random color on the wheel.

Saturation

Saturation measures how vivid or muted that color is. Crank it up for intensity or tone it down for a more laid-back feel.

Luminance

Luminance is how much light a color appears to carry. Adjusting it helps you make your colors feel airy or deep.



Why the Color Wheel Matters?

Using a color wheel chart helps make sure that your designs feel balanced, intentional, and visually appealing. It takes the guesswork out of choosing colors and gives you a framework to build on, whether you're creating a brand identity, digital illustration, or social media graphic. With the help of LogoDesign.Net’s interactive color wheel, finding the right palette is simple, innovative, and effective.

Frequently Asked Questions

The color wheel is a circular chart that organizes colors based on their relationships and helps designers create harmonious color schemes. The color wheel chart categorizes colors into primary, secondary, and tertiary, aiding in design decisions.

The color wheel was invented by Sir Isaac Newton in 1666. He experimented with light and a prism and created the first color wheel to show how colors relate and blend together.

There are a total of 12 standard spinner wheel colors. These include three primary colors (Red, Yellow, Blue), three secondary colors (Orange, Green, Violet), and six tertiary colors (Red-Orange, Yellow-Orange, Yellow-Green, Blue-Green, Blue-Violet, Red-Violet). More advanced versions include extra shades, tints, and tones for greater design flexibility.

You can use LogoDesign.Net’s color theory wheel to create beautiful palettes for your design projects in an instant. Here’s how to do it:

1. Pick a base color that will set the tone for the entire design. This will act as your anchor.

2. Select a color scheme by using the color wheel. Build a palette around your base through complementary, analogous, monochromatic, triadic, or tetradic colors.

3. Apply the palette to your projects. Use the chosen colors across text, backgrounds, and visuals to create a cohesive design.

The 60/30/10 rule is a timeless color principle that helps create balanced and visually appealing designs. You can use it when you’re decorating a space or using a random color picker wheel for your design projects.

According to this formula, 60% of the design should feature your dominant color, 30% should be your secondary color, and 10% should be reserved for an accent color.

To know what colors go well together, you can use LogoDesign.Net’s color wheel chart. It’s a simple tool that lets you visualize how colors relate and complement each other.

Not sure where to start? Search for color wheel ideas or use our color wheel tool to spark inspiration. Experiment with different combinations until you land on something you love.