Complementary colors

Complementary colors are pairs of colors which, when combined or mixed, cancel each other out (lose chroma) by producing a grayscale color like white or black. When two highly chromatic complementary colors are placed next to each other, they create a strong contrast. Complementary colors may also be called "opposite colors".

Which pairs of colors are considered complementary depends on the color model that one uses:

• Modern color theory uses either the RGBadditive color model or the CMYsubtractive color model, and in these, the complementary pairs are red–cyan, green–magenta (one of the purples), and blue–yellow.
• In the traditional RYB color model, the complementary color pairs are red–green, yellow–purple, and blue–orange.
• Opponent process theory suggests that the most contrasting color pairs are red–green and blue–yellow.
• The black–white color pair is common to all the above theories.

These contradictions stem in part from the fact that traditional color theory has been superseded by empirically-derived modern color theory, and in part from the imprecision of language. For example, blue can be the complement of both yellow and orange because a wide range of hues, from cyan to blue-violet, are called blue in English.