DIGITAL COLOUR ATLAS 4.0 · Colour Harmony

Colour Harmony

Which colours fit harmoniously to another colour?

"No one" or "all" are qualified answers to this question. Apart from the fact that the response to this question depends strongly on subjective feeling, there are nevertheless certain rules which are generally recognized (which finds it’s match in the program „Visual Color Mood).

This program determines based on these rules the following colour harmonies and variations.

Complimentary contrast: an appealing colour is balanced out with a complimentary colour
Brightness-Variation: the starting colour is varied in intensity
Saturation-Variation: the starting colour is varied in brightness
Colour development: the shades between two starting points are sought

The whole harmony window. With the button on the left you can hide several harmony windows.

The colourful tone contrast

An old rule according to Johannes Itten and Willhelm Ostwald states that colours fit together harmonically when mixed together they become achromatic (grey). The rule is based on the psychological tenet that humans perceive tensions as uncomfortable and attemtp to balance them out.

Nobody could express it better than...

"When the eye sees a colour it is immediately excited, and it is its nature, spontaneously and of necessity, at once to produce another, which with the original colour comprehends the whole chromatic scale.

A single colour excites, by a specific sensation, the tendency to universality. In order to become aware of this totality and to satisfy itself, it searches for a colourless space next to every colourful one, in order to bring out the required colour therein."

In this resides the fundamental law of all harmony of colours..."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Lightness variation

The brightness variation is not only suited to finding additions with the goal of a harmonic composition, but it is also suited to finding other (brighter or darker) variations of the selfsame basic statement.

In architecture it is e. g. commonly used to emphasize plinth areas using a lower degree of lightness and in doing so to underline the solid structure.

Saturation variation

With several different grades of the saturation variation you will obtain a colour development that culminates in the same basic statement at its maximum intensity – a heightening, it absolutely has a certain inherent dramatic.

Colourdevelopment

With this function you can calculate the colour development between two colour tones. You'll create harmonic gradients because of the same distance between each development step.

CIELAB-Symphonies – a significant advantage in quality

The colour symphonies which are calculated using the DIGITAL COLOUR ATLAS are far more harmonic than colour symphonies which are calculated in other also very professional software products Here you can find many reasons for that.