Colour Wheel | Free Download 8 Different Color Wheels

The Simple Colour Wheel 

This colour wheel (available in the free PDF download so you can print it out), shows you the primary, secondary and tertiary colours. This simple colour wheel does not show you tints (colour mixed with white), or, shades (colour plus black).

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What are Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Colours?

Primary colours, are hues (a hue is a colour), that you cannot mix from another two colours. You have to have this colour in pure form, you can't create it from other colour families.

Primary colours: red, blue and yellow.

These primary colours can be mixed together to create the secondary colours on the wheel. Secondary colours are created by combining two primary colours together. 

Secondary colours: orange, green and purple.

There are then tertiary colours, which are created by combining a primary colour with one of it's own secondary colours. For example, the primary colour, red, can be mixed with the other primary colour, yellow, to make orange. It can also be mixed with the other primary, blue, to make purple. Hence, red has co-created the two secondary colours of orange and purple. To make a tertiary colour, we mix red with orange and get a red/orange, or, mix it with purple to make a red/purple. These tertiary colours can be given many fancy names, like cadmium red for the fiery red/orange, or, magenta for the red/purple.

Tertiary colours: red/orange, yellow/orange, yellow/green, green/blue, blue/purple, purple/red.

Tint Colour Spinner

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This colour wheel has tints of the colours, which means they are mixed with white. As the colour heads into the middle, more white is added which both reduces the saturation and makes the value lighter. You might call these pale or pastel colours. 

You'll notice that as more and more white is added, all of the different colours appear to go together much better. That's because white is present in all of the mixes which is helping to unify them (make them all more similar to each other).

Colour Wheel in Shades

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Another free colour wheel you can download is of the shades. This shows all of the colours mixed with black. As you move towards the middle, more black is added. This creates dark and desaturated colours and as with the tints, the colours appear to go together better when black is mixed into them because it harmonises the mixes.

Complimentary Colour Wheel

Downloadable booklet with 8 colour wheels inside.

This special complimentary colour shows the unique relationship of two opposite colours. The outer rim is made of pure hues (colour families) but as the colours progress towards the middle they become chromatic greys. A chromatic grey is a colourful grey, not one made with black and white only. These greys were made by (digitally) mixing the complementary (opposite) colour in varying amounts. 

The closer to the middle you get, the more of the opposite colour has been added and you can see we can have a range of muddy colours. Mixing complimentary colours in paint is a wonder colour theory exercise to do and you'll be amazed at the range you can create.

Desaturated Colour Wheel

This desaturated colour wheel is different from the complementary colour wheel with its range of chromatic greys. While the desaturated colours on this wheel are still a range of chromatic greys, they have been created by mixing the original colour with black and white to reduce the saturation (colour).

You can see this retains the original colour profile, but it becomes less and less intense. The complimentary colour wheel creates chromatic greys that stray away from the original colour and become muddy.

Secondary Colour Wheel

Unlike basic colour wheels which are based off the three primary colours, which are then able to mix secondary colours, this colour wheel does not have red, yellow or blue. The secondary colours of orange, purple and green are our 'pure' colours to make other colours from. So, we can mix greys, but not primaries or true tertiary colours.

This creates an interesting colour wheel which relies on chromatic greys to fill in the gaps created by the missing colours. 

Tertiary Colour Wheels

Tertiary colour wheels look slightly different because these colours have been digitally mixed, which is quite different from painting! These colour wheels are based on three of the tertiary colours (whereas normal simple colour wheels are based on the three primary colours of red, yellow and blue). 

Because we are mixing tertiary colours, we can't get secondary or primary colours in the true sense. Instead, we will get a range of chromatic greys (remember those). Now, when we only have these three colours to work with, you will discover that the range of chromatic greys you are able to mix feels a bit like a red, or a green, even though we can't truly mix these colours.