Why do some colours go well together and some colours not?
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Most of the time with clashing colours your problem is not **hue** (red, green, blue), but their *intensity*: either their **value** (how light or dark a colour is) or **saturation** (how grey/’true’ a colour is).
Colours that ‘clash’ violently usually have similar saturation, and colours with similar value bleed into each other. Both are competing for visual attention, making our eyes tired. An artist can put *any* hues together if one is muted and/or darker (base) and the other more vivid (accent).
Cultural sensibilities. Aesthetics are learned. It’s not that colors do or don’t go together, it’s just that some people like them or don’t like them.
Color is varied light wave lengths. Certain lenth types brighten each other like complementary colors. Other light waves lengths cancel each other out or dull them analogous colors. Also color really is what waves in the light spectrum still reflect and are not absorbed makes the color. Certain combos and types of hues match best because of what they don’t reflect in common. Black is the absence of light and not reflecting any waves. This makes it compatible with any color therefore it will always be the little black dress that is best.
Another really interesting aspect of this is that the color wheel starts out with three divisions, so *there is no exact opposite.*
On old school color copy machines, if you took a color picture, inverted it, then inverted it again, *you would not end up where you started.*
It depends on what you mean by ‘go together’.
What looks good is entirely subjective, so personal preferences, expectation, context and intent all come into it.
However, I think you’re talking about ‘complimentary’ or ‘opposite’ colours. These are the colours that are opposite each other on the colour wheel. These are ‘opposites’ because they essentially cancel each other out when mixed. They lose their hue and become a shade of grey. (Theoretically… mixing coloured light works differently to paint or inks, and you won’t always get a shade of grey because of the specific pigments used in paint).
So, if you look at colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel, say Red, Orange and Yellow, these ‘go together’ because they’re visually similar, the actual wavelength of light your eye receives when looking at them are similar so they ‘work’ together. Opposites on the colour wheel basically contrast with each other as much as possible so they ‘clash’.
So, really, it just comes down to contrast. Adjacent colours are similar so they ‘go together’, complimentart colours are as ‘different’ as they can be, so they contrast and ‘fight’ each other… but again, what actually looks good is entirely subjective. It’s not as simple as saying on set of colours looks good and another looks bad because the context and ratios matter too. If you’re wearing an outfit that is 50/50 complimentary colours you’ll probably look like a clown… but if you’re wearing an outfit that is mostly one colour and has a complimentary colour as an ‘accent’ colour, the contrast will make the accent ‘pop’ and it can look good.
For example, Red and Green are complimentary colours and you might recognize those as the main Christmas colours. They look good together in the context because, well, they remind you of christmas and the whole point is to be loud and eye catching. On the other hand, if I go out wearing a pair of red jeans, a green T-shirt with a red jacket and green shoes, I’d look like a lunatic.
Some part of it is seeing which color combinations we’re already familiar with. For example, if you were to pair leaf green with almost any shade of red, pink, yellow, orange, or purple, they would work together. It’s a very common set of color combinations in fashion, interior decor, and graphic design. We also have all seen it (assuming you’re not color blind) in nature, as flowers have these color combos with their leaves. Green is practically a neutral to us. For a similar reason, navy blue is considered a pseudo neutral color that matches with almost every other color; it’s also the color of the night sky and the ocean. We’ve all seen it many many times, so seeing it again is comfortable.
The color combo of red, yellow, and blue is not inherently childish, but some people associate it with preschool or elementary school related things, because it’s often used for kids’ stuff in marketing and product packaging.
Basically, we become familiar with certain color combos, and sometimes we start associating them with certain things because we see them in a specific context so many times. If we like that context, we are more likely to like that combo. If we don’t like that context, we are less likely to like the combo.
I like this question because it can be answered from a bunch of angles, none of which I’m qualified to answer:
1. Evolution
2. Cultural taste
3. Artistic colourwheely reasons
4. Physics with the spectrum and whatnot
5. Philosophy because are colours even real man?
I’d argue that all colours go well together if it’s with a good intention. It’s just that in some scenarios
* you want to use more conservative colours since you want to focus on content,
* you want to use contrasting / complementary colours for readability / visibility,
* you want to employ a theme (sea / nature / autumn / digital) that limits the choices.
Basically, you have some colour combination generators for logos / websites. You can slap them anywhere since you have a wide range of light and dark colours for highlights / text, you have a main / complementary colours that are colorblind-friendly and have contrast.
However, you can make quite beautiful stuff when you get away from this “comfort zone” and start experimenting with non-standard combinations.
Well I imagine our eyes evolved to see plants n’ stuff better, like red berries on a green bush.
When we put distinct colors together, we probably have a vague instinct that thinks “ooo, that could be food!” or something like that
Kind of a guess but I would imagine that the primordial human developed a basic intuition for beauty according to a necessary attraction to and repulsion from things in their environment which were helpful and harmful, respectively. Complimentary colours are a detail of this beauty.
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