DIGITAL COLOUR ATLAS · FIND HARMONIES

Find Harmony

Which colours match each other harmonically?

This is a new Function of Version 3.0

Despite the general advice that taste is not debatable and therefore every colour combination is up to the user, there are a few rules of a universal character which define colours as harmonic:

Complementary Contrast
Brightness Variation
Saturation Variation
Colour Development

The DIGITAL COLOUR ATLAS submits proposals, according to these rules, on how to supplement a colour in the most meaningful way. Of course these suggestions have a non binding nature – the decision of personal taste must be left to the individual user.

Ideal and real harmony

By using the button „Ideal“ the resulting colours can be determined as CIELAB coordinates in every harmony function. If „Ideal“ is turned off the programm ascertains the results within the chosen colour system (e.g. RAL).

What is the quality of the harmony calculations?

Other programmes can also calculate colour harmonies. We believe that the quality of our results is better because...

We calculate harmonies from the CIELAB coordinates which come much closer to the colour perception than RGB or HSL colour space within which the calculations are normally performed.
We calculate harmonies directly in the chosen colour system (e.g. RAL or HKS) and although we do calculate theoretically matching colour coordinates, that is not all we do.

In other words: the results match, see for yourself!

Which colours fit to RAL 120 80 60?

The Complementary Contrast

An old standard according to Johannes Itten and Wilhelm Ostwald states that colours fit with each other harmonically if when mixed together they are no longer colourful but rather grey. That rule is based on the psychological principle that the humans perceive tension as unpleasant and strive to balance them out through contrast stimulus.

No one 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 this resides the fundamental law of all harmony of colours..."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Which RAL colour fit to RAL 120 80 60?

The Brightness 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, for example, it is common to accentuate the surfaces of plinth by using lower brightness and in this manner to underline the solidity of the plinth.

Vary dove blue!

The 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.

Which colours are between pastel yellow and signal blue.

The Colour Development

This function calculates a steady crossover between any two given colour tones, whether they are complementary, varied in brightness, varied in saturation – or all of the above.