Warm colors
DEFINITION
Colors which suggest a sense of warmth, they include red, yellow, and orange and brownish grays. All Warm Colors "lie in the red-yellow half of the Color Circle. Source: Ralph Mayer, "A Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques"<br><br> In color theory, colors which contain a large amount of yellow, as opposed to cool colors, which contain more blue. For example, a yellow-orange color would be warm; a greenish-blue would be cool. Warm colors are thought to appear to be closer to the viewer, while cool colors are thought to recede into the distance. (See also cool colors.)<br><br>Colors are often described as having temperature; as warm (reds, oranges, and yellows), or cool (greens, blues, and violets). Warm colors are often associated with fire and the sun. They appear on one side of the color wheel, and opposite the cool colors. Psychologically, warm colors are said to be stimulating and passionate. Optically, warm colors generally appear to advance, coming toward the viewer.Purple (red-violet) and yellow-green are between warm and cool. Don'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' and writers' 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.