Why Complementary Colors Look Bad, Actually

December 1, 2023 - Published

Color theory can be pretty complex, but there are some basic rules that you can learn and follow. Ideally, this article will help you understand the thought process that goes into choosing colors in art.

However, I must begin by addressing the title of the article. There's a common piece of advice I hear thrown around to beginners and non-artists: "Use opposite colors! They go well together!" In my opinion, this is the absolute worst piece of advice to give for anything color theory related.

I don't think I need to prove it any more than just showing what they look like. Above is the image from the Wikipedia page on complementary colors (which is the art term for opposite colors). Do you think they look good together? Would you go outside wearing a pink and green outfit? Maybe a cyan shirt and a bright red pants?

No, complementary colors are not the easy way to make colors look good together. As it turns out, if you put opposite colors together, you just make colors that clash. This isn't necessarily a bad thing! However, it tends to make it a lot more difficult for them to work together. 

There are a lot of other types of color schemes that we could talk about in this article -- monochromatic, analogous, triadic, split-complementary, etc., but they are very commonly talked about and can be read about anywhere else, so I won't be focusing on it. In this article, I'll be talking about how I personally see color rules. Remember that any color theory "rule" is a suggestion, but I will always recommend that you learn rules before breaking them, and have a justification in mind when deciding to break them.

#1: Saturated colors stand out

Saturation is basically "how colorful" something is: a highly saturated red is a very strong color, while a red with low saturation looks faded or grey-ish (closer to white if it's bright, black if it's dark). 

A common mistake for beginner artists is to use all colors at high saturation. You can think of a high saturation color as being a focal point -- if you have too many focal points, then it'll just look like a big mess at best and a huge eyestrain at worst.

Generally speaking, you should try to avoid using any color at max saturation (ESPECIALLY if it's also a bright color), and use high saturation colors sparingly. Notably, this leads us to our sub-rule: if you want an actual easy way for colors to look good together, just lower the saturation and turn up the brightness. People will usually refer to these casually as pastel colors, and it can make basically any color look good with any other color.

Of course, that doesn't mean you shouldn't use saturated colors at all. You'll usually be using a combination of saturated and unsaturated colors, with bright saturated colors as either a focal point, accent, or highlight.

That's honestly most of what I have to say about saturation. In something like a painting, contrast in value (i.e. light vs dark) will usually matter more than colors, but when working with something like a character design, saturation can be your most powerful tool. That being said, having lots of highly saturated colors is probably the only "DON'T DO THIS" rule in color theory I'll ever say, because it's INCREDIBLY hard to make it work, and will usually require a lot of neutral/unsaturated colors to balance it out (e.g. 90% of character designs involving "neon colors" will contrast it with a heavy black). In contrast, the other rules require heavily on what you happen to need within context.

#2: Colors further away on the color wheel provide more contrast

Colors near each other will generally look nicer together. This is because, again, there is less contrast, which gives it a lower chance of clashing. Using the RYB color wheel this time (i.e. with red, blue, and yellow being the primary colors), here's a comparison of similar colors VS opposite colors.

I'm trying to avoid labelling these as "good" and "bad" because there is a time and place for contrast. The yellow and purple combination personally reminds me of Wario, who was most likely designed specifically to be a loud and abrasive contrast from the good guys. If you want a contrast without clashing, we can also use the last rule to soften the blow a bit: having complementary colors AND desaturating the color that isn't meant to be a focus.

#3: Each color gives off a different mood

I won't go too in-depth on this because it's on every single color guide in the universe, but every color gives off a different mood. These are absolutely not set-in-stone rules, and they vary a lot on culture, but certain colors will usually evoke some kind of feeling. As a silly example, note the difference in mood that the following images give off:

Does the second image give strangely threatening vibes to you? Cool, me too!

Color vibes generally fall roughly under these categories:

Red - Love, Passion, Violence, Anger
Orange - Excitement, Optimism, Emotion
Yellow - Joy, Fun, Happiness
Green - Health, Nature, Money
Blue - Calm, Skies, Water
Purple - Mystery, Royalty, Fantasy
White - Purity, Cleanliness
Black - Power, Formality
(some meanings stolen from Wikipedia and https://www.color-meanings.com/) 

Again, these meanings aren't set in stone, but these colors will usually give off an impression along these lines. If you draw a red chair, it doesn't necessarily mean that the chair represents love, but it will also be much easier to make a blue chair look more comforting than a red chair.

I thiiiink that's all the major things I had to say about color? I feel like I had more to say, but due to the subcategories I ended up covering most of what I needed to. As with other things in art, color is a tool that you have to play around with and figure out yourself, with essentially no true rights or wrongs. If you're not sure how to use colors, I recommend trying out pastel and/or analogous colors and pushing your boundaries when you get more comfortable. Don't create contrasts when you don't need to, and you'll generally avoid color clashing.

• Vecderg