# If complimentary colors are "ideal" then why is yellow/purple not more common? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 7, 2016, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454 "2016-01-07T23:03:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Backwater\_Under\_Duck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ba8739/32.png) [@Backwater\_Under\_Duck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Backwater_Under_Duck)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2016, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/21 "2016-01-08T00:37:45Z")
I was always taught by idiot imagineless art teachers that complimentary colors simply didn’t work together because they clash and are harsh and just don’t do it. Unless you want to. There aren’t any laws. And yellow and purple is one of my favorite color schemes. But they are used. Sports and school teams for one. But lets talk about hues. Back both colors down a few steps and you have amber and lavender. Beautiful colors together. And in lighting they blend wonderfully to create fabulous warm, rich light. (Stagecraft & Lighting 101, heh.) ---
**Author:** ![Backwater\_Under\_Duck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ba8739/32.png) [@Backwater\_Under\_Duck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Backwater_Under_Duck)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2016, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/22 "2016-01-08T00:39:26Z")
Thats COMPLEMENTARY **:smack:** ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2016, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/23 "2016-01-08T02:28:20Z")
Many moons ago, during Easter, when young Salinqmind was in the single digits and was all dressed up, a popular color combination was yellow and orchid. I still remember that for some reason, I probably had a dressy Easter outfit in those colors. Never saw it much ever since, really. Orchid was a strange shade of purple, it had a little yellow in it. ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2016, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/24 "2016-01-08T02:46:07Z")
> [@salinqmind](#): > > Many moons ago, during Easter, when young Salinqmind was in the single digits and was all dressed up, a popular color combination was yellow and orchid. I still remember that for some reason, I probably had a dressy Easter outfit in those colors. Never saw it much ever since, really. Orchid was a strange shade of purple, it had a little yellow in it. What a nice image 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2016, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/25 "2016-01-08T11:35:21Z")
> [@Robert163](#): > > If complimentary colors are “ideal” then why is yellow/purple not more common? [UKIP](http://www.ukip.org/) use this combination. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2016, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/26 "2016-01-08T12:12:09Z")
> [@Greg\_Charles](#): > > Basically, everything I thought I knew about color up till fairly recently was wrong. This. The simplistic colour wheel stuff is more about looking for some form of mystical symmetry and regularity in something that is a mess of accidents of evolution. Colour is diabolically more complex than a colour wheel. The notions of complementary, primary, tertiary etc, colours just doesn’t come close to being a full theory that matches reality. Purple is also something of a weird colour. There is no such colour in the visible light spectrum. It is not violet. But it is related, in a manner that the colour wheel does not explain. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2016, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/27 "2016-01-08T12:16:45Z")
Retired superhero [Ozymandias](http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Adrian_Veidt_(Watchmen)/Gallery) is a fan of purple and gold. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2016, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/28 "2016-01-08T13:49:26Z")
Speaking of yellow, yellow pigments have heretofore been rather nasty, being based on lead, chromium, cadmium, etc, but they’ve just found that [Bismuth Vanadate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQYoWAKJTFc) is a relatively non-toxic replacement. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2016, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/29 "2016-01-08T13:49:29Z")
While “color theory” is fairly bogus in my opinion, I’ve sometimes combined yellow or chartreuse with purple in the garden. For instance, you can mix [these sweet potato vines](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/f2/5e/9ff25e63ccd125df182a150ee87fb1aa.jpg). ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2016, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/30 "2016-01-08T13:55:55Z")
And let’s not forget the Los Angeles Lakers! ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2016, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/31 "2016-01-08T14:13:13Z")
We are in the throes of a purple backlash right now. Purple, with its long associations with royalty, started to be used to make things seem classy. This quickly wore thin, and purple took on low-class connotations. It became like naming your kid “Bentley”-- a clumsy way to make things seem higher class. This made purple become untouchable in many areas. For example, you don’t see a lot of women’s business clothing in purple. The backlash is starting to die out a bit, but purple still remains a tough color for designers work with, as it still has some baggage associated with it. L ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2016, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/32 "2016-01-08T15:28:02Z")
As stated, there’s nothing “ideal” about them. All “complementary” means in this case is that, when combined, they equal black (when mixing pigments) or white (when mixing light.) Like the Wikipedia cite says, “opposite” colors may be a better term for it. (If you know something about computers and programming, “complement” is used in the way that it is in “1s complement” or “2s complement.”) When you make a negative, for those of you who remember the film days, the colors on the negative are basically the opposite color of the object when printed (minus the orange-ish film base). A yellow object will look purple on the neg; a green object red; and so on. Another way to observe complementary colors is to stare at, say, a well-lit piece of red paper or a red screen for 30-60 seconds and then avert your gaze to a white sheet of paper. The “ghost image” you will see will be green/cyan, or the complement of the color you’ve been staring at. The “artist’s primary colors,” as we’ve been taught in school are red, yellow, and blue. To find the complement of any one of these, just mix the other two. Red’s complement is yellow + blue, which is green when mixing pigments. Yellow’s complement is red plus blue, or purple. Blue’s is red plus yellow or orange. In theory, when you mix a color with its complement you should get black when dealing with pigments. However, these artist’s primaries are a little imperfect. You’ll get more like a muddy brown. Closer are cyan, magenta, and yellow, which is what is used in printing, with the addition of black, since mixed they still don’t quite produce a clean black. Anyhow, this is just a long way of saying there is nothing “ideal” about those color pairs. Complementary just means when mixed together they sum up to black (subtractive, pigment color mixing) or white (additive, light color mixing.) On a personal note, I do like complementary colors, but they are very contrasty and can be a bit garish if overused. I tend to prefer taking a complementary color and going one over on the color wheel to match with it. So instead of blue & orange, blue & yellow. Instead of purple and yellow, maybe purple and orange. But there’s much more to color matching than the hue itself. You have to take into account saturation, brightness, it’s “weight” when balancing with other colors, etc. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/33 "2016-01-11T21:02:52Z")
I think I get it. Sure, complementary colors aren’t used all the time or anything, but, when they are, it seems purple/yellow is the least common. Blue-orange is the most common, mostly due to the orange hue of skin color (even of darker skinned people), though red-green becomes a thing at Christmas time and when picking a vibrant color in the fields. But I’d ague that’s just because purple itself is rarer. I just , other than an old quilt that has some purple sections. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/34 "2016-01-11T21:35:50Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I think I get it. Sure, complementary colors aren’t used all the time or anything, but, when they are, it seems purple/yellow is the least common. Blue-orange is the most common, mostly due to the orange hue of skin color (even of darker skinned people), though red-green becomes a thing at Christmas time and when picking a vibrant color in the fields. > > But I’d ague that’s just because purple itself is rarer. I just , other than an old quilt that has some purple sections. I still say it’s because yellow is hard to work with, and domineering. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/35 "2016-01-11T21:54:39Z")
> [@gigi](#): > > I still say it’s because yellow is hard to work with, and domineering. I don’t know. You see blue & yellow quite a lot. I’d agree with **BigT** in that purple is just a rarer color. I don’t find yellow particularly difficult to work with, but it can dominate and you have to balance it. If using in a complementary fashion, you probably want something like 4 times more purple in your image than yellow for it to feel “balanced.” Red and green are about equal in weight. Orange and blue are somewhere in between. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/36 "2016-01-11T22:05:09Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > Chicago Bears; Fighting Illini… Detroit Tigers. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/37 "2016-01-11T22:22:15Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > If using in a complementary fashion, you probably want something like 4 times more purple in your image than yellow for it to feel “balanced.” That’s about the proportion I’ve heard for quilting too. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/38 "2016-01-11T22:26:31Z")
> [@cmyk](#): > > Detroit Tigers. Firefox New York Knicks NY Mets The New York City flag Syracuse Visa and FedEx come somewhat close, although Visa’s orange is more an amber, and FedEx’s dark color is probably more accurately purple (well, the [designer](http://www.thesneeze.com/secrets-of-the-fedex-logo/) says it’s purple, so I’ll go with him.) ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/39 "2016-01-11T22:28:44Z")
And where does the Straight Dope website banner fit into all of this? I’d call it complementary, kind of indigo and amber. But I could understand someone calling it any combination of (blue or purple) and (yellow or orange.) ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2016, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454/40 "2016-01-11T23:41:06Z")
I think people avoid red/green specifically because it looks like Christmas. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-complimentary-colors-are-ideal-then-why-is-yellow-purple-not-more-common/742454.md?page=3)