A color wheel or color circle is an abstract illustrative organization of

color Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are assoc ...

hue In color theory, hue is one of the main properties (called color appearance parameters) of a color, defined technically in the CIECAM02 model as "the degree to which a stimulus can be described as similar to or different from stimuli that ...

s around a circle, which shows the relationships between

primary color A set of primary colors or primary colours (see spelling differences) consists of colorants or colored lights that can be mixed in varying amounts to produce a gamut of colors. This is the essential method used to create the perception of ...

secondary color A secondary color is a color made by color mixing, mixing of two primary colors in a given color space. Additive secondaries Light (RGB) For the human eye, good primary colors of light are red, green, and blue. Combining lights of these colo ...

tertiary color A tertiary color or intermediate color is a color made by mixing full saturation of one primary color with half saturation of another primary color and none of a third primary color, in a given color space such as RGB, CMYK (more modern) or RYB ...

s etc. Some sources use the terms ''color wheel'' & ''color circle'' interchangeably; however, one term or the other may be more prevalent in certain fields or certain versions as mentioned above. For instance, some reserve the term ''color wheel'' for mechanical rotating devices, such as color tops, filter wheels or Newton disc. Others classify various color wheels as ''color disc'', ''color chart'', and ''color scale'' varieties.

History

In his book ''

Opticks ''Opticks: or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light'' is a book by English natural philosopher Isaac Newton that was published in English in 1704 (a scholarly Latin translation appeared in 1706). (''Opti ...

'',

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a " natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the g ...

presented a color circle to illustrate the relations between these colors. The original color circle of Isaac Newton showed only the spectral hues and was provided to illustrate a rule for the color of mixtures of lights, that these could be approximately predicted from the center of gravity of the numbers of "rays" of each spectral color present (represented in his diagram by small circles). The divisions of Newton's circle are of unequal size, being based on the intervals of a

Dorian Dorian may refer to: Ancient Greece * Dorians, one of the main ethnic divisions of ancient Greeks * Doric Greek, or Dorian, the dialect spoken by the Dorians Art and entertainment Films * ''Dorian'' (film), the Canadian title of the 2004 film ' ...

musical scale. Most later color circles include the

purple Purple is any of a variety of colors with hue between red and blue. In the RGB color model used in computer and television screens, purples are produced by mixing red and blue light. In the RYB color model historically used by painters, ...

s, however, between red and violet, and have equal-sized hue divisions. Color scientists and psychologists often use the

additive primaries A set of primary colors or primary colours (see spelling differences) consists of colorants or colored lights that can be mixed in varying amounts to produce a gamut of colors. This is the essential method used to create the perception of ...

, red,

green Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 Nanometre, nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by ...

, and blue; and often refer to their arrangement around a circle as a color circle as opposed to a color wheel. Thomas Young postulated that the eye contains receptors that respond to three different primary sensations, or spectra of light.

James Clerk Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and scientist responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and ligh ...

showed that all hues, but not all colors, can be created from three

s such as red, green, and blue, if they are mixed in the right proportions.

Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as t ...

's ''

Theory of Colours ''Theory of Colours'' (german: Zur Farbenlehre, links=no) is a book by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about the poet's views on the nature of colours and how these are perceived by humans. It was published in German in 1810 and in English in 1840 ...

'' provided the first systematic study of the physiological effects of color (1810). His observations on the effect of opposed colors led him to a symmetric arrangement of his color wheel anticipating

Ewald Hering Karl Ewald Konstantin Hering (5 August 1834 – 26 January 1918) was a German physiologist who did much research into color vision, binocular perception and eye movements. He proposed opponent color theory in 1892. Born in Alt-Gersdorf, Ki ...

opponent color theory The opponent process is a color theory that states that the human visual system interprets information about color by processing signals from photoreceptor cells in an antagonistic manner. The opponent-process theory suggests that there are th ...

(1872).

Colors of the color wheel

Trichromatic model

Most color wheels are based on three primary colors, three secondary colors, and the six intermediates formed by mixing a primary with a secondary, known as tertiary colors, for a total of 12 main divisions; some add more intermediates, for 24 named colors. They make use of the trichromatic model of color.

Subtractive

The typical artists' paint or pigment color wheel includes the blue, red, and yellow

s. The corresponding

s are green, orange, and violet or purple. The

s are green-yellow, yellow-orange, orange-red, red-violet/purple, purple/violet-blue and blue-green. Non-digital visual artists typically use

red Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a seconda ...

yellow Yellow is the color between green and orange on the spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 575585 nm. It is a primary color in subtractive color systems, used in painting or color printing. In ...

, and

blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when ...

primaries (

RYB color model RYB (an abbreviation of red–yellow–blue) is a subtractive color model used in art and applied design in which red, yellow, and blue pigments are considered primary colors. Under traditional color theory, (which some artists see as the � ...

) arranged at three equally spaced points around their color wheel. Printers and others who use modern subtractive color methods and terminology use

magenta Magenta () is a color that is variously defined as pinkish- purplish- red, reddish-purplish-pink or mauvish- crimson. On color wheels of the RGB (additive) and CMY (subtractive) color models, it is located exactly midway between red and bl ...

, and

cyan Cyan () is the color between green and blue on the visible spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a predominant wavelength between 490 and 520 nm, between the wavelengths of green and blue. In the subtractive color system, or CMYK col ...

subtractive primaries A set of primary colors or primary colours (see spelling differences) consists of colorants or colored lights that can be mixed in varying amounts to produce a gamut of colors. This is the essential method used to create the perception of a ...

. Intermediate and interior points of color wheels and circles represent color mixtures. In a paint or subtractive color wheel, the "center of gravity" is usually (but not always) black, representing all colors of light being absorbed.

Additive

A color wheel based on

RGB The RGB color model is an additive color model in which the red, green and blue primary colors of light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three additiv ...

(red, green, blue) additive primaries has cyan, magenta, and yellow secondaries. Alternatively, the same arrangement of colors around a circle can be described as based on cyan, magenta, and yellow subtractive primaries, with red, green, and blue being secondaries. Sometimes a RGV (red, green, violet) triad is used instead. In an additive color circle, the center is white or gray, indicating a mixture of different wavelengths of light (all wavelengths, or two complementary colors, for example). Hsv color circle

The

HSL and HSV HSL (for hue, saturation, lightness) and HSV (for hue, saturation, value; also known as HSB, for hue, saturation, brightness) are alternative representations of the RGB color model, designed in the 1970s by computer graphics researchers to more ...

color spaces are simple geometric transformations of the

cube into cylindrical form. The outer top circle of the HSV cylinder – or the outer middle circle of the HSL cylinder – can be thought of as a color wheel. There is no authoritative way of labelling the colors in such a color wheel, but the six colors which fall at the corners of the RGB cube are given names in the X11 color list, and are named keywords in HTML.

Opponent process model

Some color wheels are based on the four

opponent process The opponent process is a color theory that states that the human visual system interprets information about color by processing signals from photoreceptor cells in an antagonistic manner. The opponent-process theory suggests that there are thre ...

colors - red, yellow, blue and green. This includes those of the

Natural Color System The Natural Color System (NCS) is a proprietary perceptual color model. It is based on the color opponency hypothesis of color vision, first proposed by German physiologist Ewald Hering. The current version of the NCS was developed by the S ...

The color circle and color vision

A color circle based on spectral wavelengths appears with

red Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, n