Color Basics: Hue, Value and Saturation

Color can feel overwhelming: millions of possibilities, and so many ways to make a mess. But every color can be described with just three properties. Learn to see them separately and color becomes something you can control.

The three properties of color

• Hue: the color family: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. It's what we usually mean by "color."
• Saturation (also called chroma or intensity): how pure or vivid the color is. High saturation is intense; low saturation is grayish, muted.
• Value: how light or dark it is. You already know this one from the value lesson, and it's still the most important.

The color wheel

The color wheel arranges hues in a circle, showing their relationships.

• Primary colors (traditional painter's model): red, yellow, blue. They can't be mixed from other paints (in this simplified model).
• Secondary colors: orange, green, violet, each a mix of two primaries.
• Tertiary colors: mixes of a primary and a neighboring secondary (yellow-orange, blue-green…).
• Complementary colors sit opposite each other: red–green, blue–orange, yellow–violet.

Saturation in practice

In nature, most colors are not very saturated. Highly saturated colors are rare and attract attention. A classic approach: keep most of the picture muted and use the strongest saturation only at the focal point.

To lower saturation, you can mix a color with its complement, with gray, or with an earth color (like burnt umber).

Value in color

Every hue has a natural value: yellow is light, violet is dark. When you paint, the value of each color must still fit your value plan. Explore the wheel below and turn on "show values" to see how the hues compare in lightness: