There’s many different ways to approach colour theory, and there’s been a wide range of, systems, colour wheels, chromatic disks, and so on. That’s because there is also many ways to synthesize and organize colours. There’s additive (RGB) and substractive (CMYK) synthesis, or light and pigment synthesis. In our case (interior design), it’s more convenient to think about pigment colors (paint and dyes).
Johannes Itten, one of our all-time favourite color theorists, artist and core professor at the Weimar Bauhaus, flawlessly renders his meticulous artist-oriented colour theory in his book The Art of Color . Through his research he devised seven methodologies for coordinating colors utilizing the hue’s contrasting properties, one of them being, you guessed it, complementary contrasts.
“We designate with the name of complementary to two colors of pigment that give a gray-black of neutral tone when combined. (…) They oppose each other and demand their reciprocal presence. Its approach enlivens its luminosity but when mixed they are mutually destroyed and produce gray – like water and fire. There is only one color complementary to another.
We can remember as an example of pairs of complementary colors: Yellow : Violet Yellow-orange : Violet-blue Orange : Blue Red-orange : Blue-green Red : Green Red-violet : Yellow-green
It reveals a strange fact, inexplicable until today: for a given color, our eye requires its complementary color and, if it is not given, it produces it by itself. This phenomenon has great importance for all artists.”
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