Are you wondering how to get purple in paint? You want to get into mixing and would like to know which two shades together give purple. Let’s go deeper and explain how to combine colors to create other colors. What are the basic principles that can be applied to mixtures of paints, but also hair dyes, food colorings, etc.
If you follow basic color theory, you will find that you can mix primary colors to create secondary colors and then mix adjacent colors again to create tertiary colors. In short, what must be remembered is that the primary colors are: red, yellow and blue. The secondary colors are: green, orange and purple. And the tertiary colors are: yellow-orange, red-orange, red-violet, blue-violet, blue-green and yellow-green. If you have the three basic colors at your disposal: red, yellow and blue, you can mix them to create a beautiful color palette. And so, how do you get purple? What is the symbolism of this color?
The symbolism of purple
Purple is considered the color of spirit and spirituality. It is said to promote mental balance and determination, but it can also have an ambiguous, mystical and magical effect. Purple has a strong meditative effect. It influences the subconscious and provides therapeutic support for deep psychological issues. Purple represents introspection and spiritual immersion. It is the color of inspiration, mysticism, magic and art. It is an extraordinary and extravagant color. Violet tones stimulate our imagination, they inspire and motivate us to put unusual ideas into practice.
The two colors which together give purple
As mentioned above, if you mix two primary colors together, you can create purple because purple is a secondary color. When you mix blue and red, you get purple! But what if you’re looking for a particular shade of purple? You can create different shades of purple by mixing different shades of red and blue. Here are some examples :
- if you mix warm red with blue you get a nice deep purple.
- whereas if you mix a lighter shade of blue and warm red, you’ll get a lighter purple.
The color combinations are endless! As long as you mix different shades of blue or red, you can always get a version of purple.
What colors to get purple paint?
It is true that this principle of mixing colors can create disappointments. You grow up with the idea that mixing blue and red gives you purple, yellow with blue gives you green, and red with yellow gives you orange. In practice, this is not necessarily true. Try to see and you may not get the color you want in fine.
Red and blue make purple together well. The problem lies in the quantity of the two colors which you used, and especially, in their shade. Being primary colors, red and blue have many shades and not choosing the right one will produce very strange purple colors that you may not necessarily be happy with. In the reds, you have vermilion and magenta, for example. In the reds, you have ultramarine, cobalt or turquoise, in particular. It is therefore possible that you do not know which colors to choose to obtain purple.
Some blues and some reds show traces of yellow and that’s what distorts the situation. Yellow is a complementary color to purple and mixing them together will cause the latter to desaturation, making it dull. It is therefore important to check the primary colors you use (blue and red in this case) to make sure they do not contain yellow. Again, for you to get a “clean” purple from your mix, you need to have a strong red with a strong blue in both cases containing no element of yellow.
Now you can see that there are many ways to combine colors to create purple. You can start with a basic color palette and mix blue and red to create purple. Or you can mix several colors to get different shades of purple. Either way, you need to experiment to find what works best for you. It’s a nice skill that you can apply for mixing paint, markers, or even nail polish. The color mixing applications are endless!