Why do not certain colors go together?

For exampel in the matter of clothes, why do certain colors in combination make no sence?
I mean, I can tell if something seems right or wrong but why? Is there some logic behind this or just a matter of taste?
Also and if there are rules to this what are they?

Maybe this is a pretty silly question but I got thinking about it and as my old chemistry teacher used to say “There are no stupid questions only stupid answers.” :slight_smile:

It’s a matter of personal taste - some people think black and white don’t go together, while some do. I don’t, for one, but a nice light grey goes wonderfully with black. The reason some colors ‘clash’ is just in the head - the same reason why a rectangle that’s 1.6 times longer than it is wide is considered to be the ‘perfect’ rectangle.

Welcome to the Boards, Jocke. We hope your stay is a pleasant one.

The real question here is ‘why do certain colours not go together for certain people
Personaly I lack the necessary gift to see this, and I frequently get corrected by my wife. “you can’t go out with that shirt and those trousers!”

I wouldn’t have thought green and purple would ever go together well, but apparently those nice people at Wimbledon do.

It’s a good question and one I’ve occasionally wondered about, but I suspect the answer is going to come down to personal taste.

This is a very interesting question. The limited formal instruction I’ve had in color theory never dealt much with why certain colors worked together and others did not. You may be familiar with monochromatic color schemes, or complimentary color schemes, but why do people think these color schemes look good? I’m not sure.

Things are even more complicated when it comes to clothing, since color combinations that might “go together” in a painting or on a detergant box might be too bright or flashy for a day at the office. This is an area where personal taste plays a huge role. It’s not merely a question of whether this shade of red looks good with that shade of blue, but also how good either color will look on the person wearing it and how suitable the combination is for the situation it will be worn in.

One thing I’ve worked out through my own artistic experiments is that you can get away with just about any combination of hues as long as their saturation and value is the same. Pale, dusty yellow looks just fine with pale, dusty blue. Bright, vibrant yellow looks just fine with bright, vibrant blue, although it is a combination that would usually be too bold for clothing. However, bright, vibrant yellow with pale, dusty blue is questionable, and oddly enough bright, vibrant yellow with pale, dusty yellow seems even worse.

It also seems that the cooler end of the color spectrum is more forgiving than the warmer end. I’m not sure why this is, but I think the human eye is more sensitive to minor color variations at the warm end than the cool end. It is almost impossible to match a red blouse with a red skirt – if they aren’t exactly the same color, or at least the same hue, then they will probably look terrible together. You have more freedom with blues or greens.

You should visit New Orleans for Mardi Gras. They’ll make a green-&-purple convert of you.

I was hoping for a scientifically quantified answer to this question, something about the electromagnetic Hertz frequency differential causing interference patterns.

Exactly what happens when we perceive color is still quite unexplored. The raw output from your eyes is processed already in the retina. According to the opponent-processing theory, the color information is converted into three channels, each encoding between two antagonistic values, light<>dark, reddish<>greenish, and bluish<>yellowish.

Maybe some output patterns are easier to compare than others, already on a low neuron level. If the signals for two colors are different on all channels, it’s easy to make a comparison for each channel separately. If they are too similar on one channel, it doesn’t help for the others being different. You are not certain until after the information from all channels is combined and you compare at a higher level.

Afterwards there’s still plenty of room for your brain and its taste to decide if you like certain colors together because they don’t generate too much ‘noise’, or because all their signals are different and it was easy to compare them.