Colour fundamentals
The Colour Literacy Project aims to re-frame colour education to align with 21st century challenges and opportunities. From this updated perspective, we start with seeing, noticing and describing all the variations of colours around us. As we build our visual vocabulary, and become attuned to all the colours that surround us, we create a strong foundation for our colour journey.
Our Colour Fundamentals pages introduce key ideas about the important role of colour in our lives and how we see, describe and work with colours.
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Colour is an essential part of our lives.
Our emotional responses to colour are complex.
Colour is a perceptual experience.
Not everyone perceives colours in the same way.
Light is key for colour.
Colour is contextual.
We can describe colours by their hue family and character.
Colour organization is 3-dimensional
Colours communicate
When we mix coloured media, the resulting mixture depends on the process.
Common colour misconceptions
Our knowledge about colour is constantly evolving. Due to a lack of awareness of current colour research, or an oversimplified view of colour, several common misconceptions about colour have not yet been updated - for example, the dominant idea that red, yellow and blue are ‘the primary colours’, or that there are ‘only’ seven colours in the rainbow.
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Misconception: Colours have universal symbolic meanings.
Misconception: People who are ‘colour blind’ see the world in black and white.
Misconception: Magenta is not a ‘real’ colour.
Misconception: Light rays (or their wavelengths) are coloured.
Misconception: Yellow objects reflect only yellow wavelengths.
Misconception: Colour and hue mean the same thing.
Misconception: Black, white and grey are not colours.
Misconception: The rainbow (or spectrum) contains all the colours we can see.
Misconception: The spectrum is divided into only seven colours.
Misconception: All colours can be mixed using a ‘primary’ set of three.
Misconception: There are simple rules that guarantee colour harmony.
Misconception: Green paints made by mixing ‘contain’ yellow and blue.
