The correct values can make all the difference in creating your best designs and artwork.

Don't allow the simplicity of the definition of value -the lightness or darkness - to keep you from seeing its complexity and importance.

The more you know about each color, the easier it is to find compatible colors. Understanding these dimensions of color will let you recognize what it is that makes each hue unique.

Learn to identify the hue, value, and chroma of any color.

On the chroma value chart above, you can see that in each horizontal row of squares chroma changes in chroma, but the value of all squares in the row remains the same because the two original colors were of equal value. When you combine gray or any other color with a hue, the value changes most of the time. When you mix white or black with a hue, you change its value making it lighter or darker. When you mix white, black, gray, or any color into a hue, you reduce its chroma. The colors below have a lower (darker) value and lower chroma the colors above have a higher (lighter) value and lower chroma. Going in the other direction, as you add more and more black to pure red, the resulting colors are darker and less saturated.Īll of the other colors you see in the grid have a lower chroma than the squares of pure red and pure green. In this case, as you add more and more white to pure red, the resulting colors are lighter and less saturated.

The value of a color can increase as the chroma decreases. They also become lower in chroma.Ĭhroma and value are independent of one another. As the squares move towards black, they become darker in value. Next, look at the squares below pure red. As the squares move from red towards white, they become lighter in value. Each square shows red blended with white. Go back to the column on the far left and look at the squares above the red hue. It is not a difficult concept, but one that many people find difficult to wrap their mind around because it is challenging to think about these two dimensions of color at once. Now, I want you to slow down enough to think about what happens when both the chroma and value of a color change. In this case, the squares get dark more quickly.Ĭan you see that many of the squares in each set have the same value? If two colors have the same hue and value yet appear to be different, what it is about the color that changed?Īnswering that question takes us to the third characteristic of color - chroma. Next, look at the rows of blue, which has a darker value than middle gray. Notice that the steps between yellow and gray or yellow and black get darker in value more slowly than they did with red. Now, look at the rows of yellow, which has a lighter value than middle gray. Because the color red and middle gray have the same value, the value is slightly darker but has not changed significantly.In the top row, as you move from red on the left to black on the right, the red gets darker, and the value gets lower as it gets closer to black.īut what about the middle row? Have the values changed.In the bottom row, from red to white, the value of each square gets lighter.What makes them appear to be different is their value (lightness or darkness.) All of the squared in the three rows except for pure black, white, and middle gray are red.Look at the three rows with red above first. adding black, white, or gray may change the color due to the impurity of materials. However, when working with actual pigments, paints, inks, dyes, etc. In theory, adding white, black, or gray to a hue does not change the color it only adjusts the value (lightness or darkness). Let's look at each characteristic and explore how hue value chroma work together to define every color. Not only will you be able to describe colors to others more accurately, but you'll also become more adept at selecting the right colors and creating color harmonies for any project. The more clearly and consistently you can describe each of the three parts of color, the better you will become at seeing color undertones and detecting the subtle differences between colors. For example, if you've ever described a color as being light blue-gray or deep olive green, you've expressed all three of these attributes.

Hue, value, and chroma are just technical-sounding terms for the way you talk about colors every day. Mixing a pure hue with black, white, gray, or any other color reduces its purity and lowers the strength of the original hue. Chroma is the attribute that expresses the purity of a color.

It defines a color in terms of how close it is to white or black. Value refers to the lightness or darkness of a color. Hue distinguishes one color from another and is described using common color names such as green, blue, red, yellow, etc.

Chroma for hue