Color theory

Color theory studies how colors relate, combine, and affect visual perception. It draws on optics, human vision, and artistic practice to explain color systems and their use.

Visible spectrum: The range of electromagnetic wavelengths detectable by human vision, approximately 380 to 700 nanometers. Its wavelengths provide the physical basis for many colors perceived in light.
Additive color: Color formed by combining emitted lights, with red, green, and blue as common primary channels. Screens combine light rather than pigments to produce colors.
Color wheel: A circular diagram that arranges hues to show relationships such as opposition and adjacency. Artists use it to plan palettes and identify complementary hues.
Newton's prism experiments: Experiments showing that a prism separates white light into a spectrum of colors and recombines them. They established a physical account of spectral color distinct from pigment traditions.
Isaac Newton: English mathematician and physicist whose work established foundational laws of motion, gravity, and optics. His prism experiments made spectral analysis central to color science.
Color vision: The visual system’s ability to distinguish differences in light wavelength and intensity as color. Color relationships depend on how the eye and brain encode visual signals.
Subtractive color: Color produced when materials absorb selected wavelengths from illuminating light. Paint and printing alter reflected light through pigment absorption.
Color harmony: Aesthetic relationships among colors that create a coherent visual composition. Harmony describes how selected colors work together in a design.
Goethe's theory of colours: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s account of color emphasizing perception and the effects of light and darkness. It foregrounded perceptual experience against Newtonian optical explanations.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: German writer and natural philosopher who published a theory of color based on perception and observation. His account challenged the priority Newton gave to optical decomposition.

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