13 Facts About Complementary colors

Complementary colors are pairs of colors which, when combined or mixed, cancel each other out by producing a grayscale color like white or black.

Which pairs of colors are considered complementary depends on the color theory one uses:.

The traditional complementary colors used by 19th-century artists such as Van Gogh, Monet and Renoir are directly opposite each other.

Effect that Complementary colors have upon each other had been noted since antiquity.

The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe presented his own theory in 1810, stating that the two primary Complementary colors were those in the greatest opposition to each other, yellow and blue, representing light and darkness.

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Complementary colors showed that it was possible to create magenta by combining red and blue light; to create yellow by mixing red and green light; and to create cyan, or blue-green, by mixing green and blue.

Complementary colors found that it was possible to create virtually any other color by modifying the intensity of these colors.

At about the same time as Young discovered additive colors, another British scientist, David Brewster, the inventor of the kaleidoscope, proposed a competing theory that the true primary colors were red, yellow, and blue, and that the true complementary pairs were red–green, blue–orange, and yellow–purple.

In 1828, the French chemist Eugene Chevreul, making a study of the manufacture of Gobelin tapestries to make the colors brighter, demonstrated scientifically that "the arrangement of complementary colors is superior to any other harmony of contrasts".

The use of complementary colors was further publicized by the French art critic Charles Blanc in his book Grammaire des arts et du dessin and later by the American color theorist Ogden Rood in his book Modern Chromatics .

Complementary colors declared that colors opposite each other had the strongest contrast and harmony.

Complementary colors wrote to his brother Theo of "searching for oppositions of blue with orange, of red with green, of yellow with purple, searching for broken colors and neutral colors to harmonize the brutality of extremes, trying to make the colors intense, and not a harmony of greys".

Use of complementary colors is an important aspect of aesthetically pleasing art and graphic design.