Harmony (color)

Artists and designers make use of these harmonies in order to achieve certain moods or aesthetics.

This maintains the tension of complementary colors while simultaneously introducing more visual interest with more variety.

It forms the basis for a color scheme, and in practice many color schemes are a combination of analogous and complementary harmonies in order to achieve both visual interest through variety, chromatic stability, and tension through contrast.

These factors include individual differences (such as age, gender, personal preference, affective state, etc.)

as well as cultural, sub-cultural and socially-based differences which gives rise to conditioning and learned responses about color.

Wherein color harmony is a function (f) of the interaction between color/s (Col 1, 2, 3, …, n) and the factors that influence positive aesthetic response to color: individual differences (ID) such as age, gender, personality and affective state; cultural experiences (CE); contextual effects (CX) which include setting and ambient lighting; intervening perceptual effects (P); and temporal effects (T) in terms of prevailing social trends.

In addition, split complementary color schemes usually depict a modified complementary pair, with instead of the "true" second color being chosen, a range of analogous hues around it are chosen, i.e. the split complements of red are blue-green and yellow-green.

Feisner and Mahnke are among a number of authors who provide color combination guidelines in greater detail.

[5][6] Color combination formulae and principles may provide some guidance but have limited practical application.

Such formulae and principles may be useful in fashion, interior and graphic design, but much depends on the tastes, lifestyle and cultural norms of the viewer or consumer.

Such color associations tend to be learned and do not necessarily hold irrespective of individual and cultural differences or contextual, temporal or perceptual factors.