Cool colors

Colors that suggest cool sensations and lie within the green-violet half of the color circle. Blue is dominant. Source: Ralph Mayer, "A Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques"<br><br> In color theory, colors are described as either warm, cool, or neutral. A cool color generally is one which contains a large amount of blue, as opposed to a warm color, which will contain more yellow. In theory, cool colors seem to recede in space, as the distant mountains or hills tend to appear light bluish-gray, and the closer ones will be more green or brown (warmer). In landscape paintings, artists often paint the distant hills in this pale blue color; and it is generally thought that cool colors will recede into space in any painting. However, color is a complex element, and colors often misbehave - it is usually best to go on a case-by-case basis, because colors are influenced greatly by what colors they are next to, appearing "warm" in one setting, and "cool" in another. (I recommend reading the abbreviated version of The Interaction of Color, by Josef Albers, for his ideas and exercises.)<br><br>Colors are often described as having temperature ? as warm (reds, oranges, and yellows) or cool (greens, blues, and violets). Cool colors are often associated with water, sky, spring, and foliage, and suggest cool temperatures. They appear on one side of the color wheel, and opposite the warm colors. Psychologically, cool colors are said to be calming, unemphatic, depressive; and optically, they generally appear to recede.Purple (red-violet) and yellow-green are between warm and cool. Don&#39;t call them "neutral," because neutral colors are grays, whites, and blacks. Meteorologists discuss the middling temperatures much more than than color theorists do. Following the lead of the weather-folk, if the color is as in-between warm and cool as it could possibly be, the most solid word is "temperate." "Mild" leans slightly more toward warm than toward cool ? this would be appropriate for a certain yellow that is somewhat green, or a certain red that is somewhat violet, but not for the utterly in-between colors.Other words are problematic in other ways, often for suggesting value judgments, and those would (or might) be unwanted. ArtLex generally avoids prescriptive judgments, preferring to report patterns in art speakers&#39; and writers&#39; behaviors. Nevertheless, if we had to choose a word for the colors that are absolutely balanced between warm and cool, temperate is that bon mot. Contact to report what word you use, or someone uses for in-between-warm-and-cool colors.Also see analogous colors, chroma, complementary colors, earth colors, hue, shade, and tint.