Color Theory for Coloring Pages

Have you ever finished a coloring page and felt something was off, even though every color on its own was lovely? Usually the colors are fine. It is the way they sit together. A little color theory gives you a few reliable ways to choose colors that work as a team, and it takes the guesswork out of that blank page.

The color wheel in one minute

The idea of arranging colors in order goes back to experiments with light. According to Smithsonian Libraries (opens in a new tab), Isaac Newton began experimenting with sunlight and prisms in the 1660s and showed that clear white light is made up of seven visible colors, work he described in his book Opticks (1704).

Artists use a simpler tool: the color wheel. The Andy Warhol Museum's lesson on Space Fruit and the Color Wheel (opens in a new tab) describes it as a circle of colored sections showing how colors relate to each other and how they mix. Its color terminology handout (opens in a new tab) gives the three families on a traditional painter's wheel:

• Primary colors: red, yellow and blue, which cannot be mixed from other colors.
• Secondary colors: orange, green and violet, each made by mixing two primaries.
• Tertiary colors: one primary mixed with one secondary, such as yellow-green or red-orange.

If you do not own a color wheel, make one: color twelve wedges of a circle in order, starting with yellow, yellow-orange, orange and so on around to yellow-green. Keep it next to you when you plan a page.

Three words that help: hue, value and intensity

The Wisconsin 4-H Drawing and Painting guide (opens in a new tab) breaks color into three qualities:

• Hue is the name of the color: red, green, blue-green.
• Value is how light or dark it is. The guide notes that yellow is a light color while red in its pure state is a dark one, and that you can test a color by comparing it to white, the lightest, and black, the darkest.
• Intensity is how bright or dull it is, which you can only judge by comparing colors side by side.

When a page looks muddy or flat, checking these three qualities, especially value, is a good place to start.

Palettes that work

A palette is just the set of colors you choose for a page. These classic color schemes are reliable starting points. The definitions come from the Warhol Museum handout and the Art in Focus textbook (opens in a new tab).

Monochromatic

One hue plus its lighter and darker versions. Add white and you get a tint, add black and you get a shade. A page colored in five blues, from pale sky to deep navy, looks calm and elegant, and it is a great way to practice value.

Analogous

Colors that sit side by side on the wheel, such as yellow, yellow-orange and orange, or blue, blue-green and green. Analogous palettes feel harmonious and natural. Think of a sunset or a forest. They are a safe choice for flowers, landscapes and mandalas.

Complementary

Two hues opposite each other on the wheel: red and green, blue and orange, yellow and violet. A color theory page from American River College (opens in a new tab) calls complements two colors of maximum contrast, which is why they grab attention. Use one as the main color and the other as an accent, such as orange fish against a blue sea, rather than splitting the page half and half.

Split-complementary

One color plus the two colors on either side of its complement. Blue with yellow-orange and red-orange, for example. You get the punch of a complementary scheme with a little more variety.

Triadic

Three colors equally spaced around the wheel, like the three primaries (red, yellow and blue) or the three secondaries (orange, green and violet). Triads are lively and playful, great for children's pages, butterflies and bold patterns. Let one color lead and use the other two in smaller amounts.

Warm vs cool

The Warhol handout describes temperature as a color's perceived warmth or coolness. It groups reds, oranges and yellows as warm, "aggressive" colors and greens, blues and violets as cool, "receding" ones. The 4-H guide links warm colors with fire and glowing heat, and cool ones with ice and frost.

You can use that on a page:

• Warm colors seem to come forward, so use them on the subject you want people to notice first.
• Cool colors seem to sit back, which makes them a good choice for skies, water and backgrounds.
• A mostly cool page with one warm accent, or the reverse, is an easy way to make a focal point.

Value contrast: the secret ingredient

You can pick a perfect palette and still end up with a flat page if every color has the same value. Light and dark next to each other are what make shapes stand out.

Two quick checks:

1. Squint at your page or your planned colors. Shapes that blur together are too close in value.
2. Take a photo in black-and-white mode on your phone. If the whole picture turns the same gray, add some darker shadows or leave some lighter areas.

A useful pattern is light, medium and dark: choose one light, one medium and one dark color, and make sure all three appear across the page.

Pick your palette before you start

A few minutes of planning saves a lot of erasing:

1. Choose a key color. The Warhol handout defines the key color as the dominant color in a scheme. Decide what yours is.
2. Pick a scheme from the list above and add two to four supporting colors.
3. Make a swatch strip. Color a small patch of each color in the margin or on scrap paper, side by side, and look at them together.
4. Check the values. Make sure you have at least one light and one dark.
5. Write it down. Note the colors you used so you can repeat a palette you love.

Rules are a starting point

Color theory is a toolkit, not a test. The 4-H guide puts it well: the colors you choose depend more on how you feel about color than on rules or formulas, and your sense of color choice improves the more you work with it. Use the schemes above when you feel stuck, and break them whenever a page tells you to.

Two of our other guides put these ideas to work. Learning to Color With a Color Guide shows how to study a finished color version and borrow its palette, and How to Color a Mandala applies palettes and gradients to rings of repeating shapes.

Try it

• Practice with a color guide beside you: the flower pages from Floral Bliss show a finished version you can compare with your own palette.
• Try a triadic palette on the butterfly coloring pages.
• Use cool blues and greens with one warm accent on the sea life coloring pages.
• Plan an analogous palette for one of the free mandala coloring pages.