Six split disks on black from Bezold's 1876 Plate IV, each half one color: carmine and bluish green, vermilion and turquoise-blue, orange and ultramarine, green and purple, yellowish green and purplish violet, yellow and bluish violet.

Concept · Relationships

Complementary

Complementary colors sit opposite each other on the color wheel, and side by side each makes the other look more intense.

Between them, each pair contains all three paint primaries: red is set against green, and green is yellow mixed with blue. Bezold's 1876 pairs sit opposite on his twelve-step circle; he notes only purple and green are true complements of light.

  • To spot a pair, find a picture's main hue and look for its opposite elsewhere in the picture.
  • Where opposites of matched lightness meet, the edge can flicker; Vibrating and Vanishing Edges explains why.

See

Image: Smithsonian Libraries via Internet Archive · Public domain

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