Colour Characteristics
Hue (Another name for colour)
- With hue we define the undertone of the colour
- This means whether someone tends to have either a blue-based or yellow-based undertone e.g. blue red or tomato red. The warmer a colour the more yellow it has, the cooler the colour the more blue it has.
Value / Brightness (Depth of the colour)
- The value is a measurement of the brightness of a colour. The brighter a colour is, the higher is its value and the more light it emits.
Chroma / Saturation (Clarity of the colour)
- Indicates colour intensity.
- It is a measurement of how different from pure grey the colour is. Chroma is a measurement how pale or strong the colour is.
- Some colours are bright and clear and others are muted or dusky. The softer the colour the more grey it has
Tint, tone and shade
- These are terms to describe how a colour varies from its original hue. If white is added, the lighter version of the colour is called a tint of the colour.
- On the other hand, if grey is added we get a darker version of the colour, which is called tone and if black is added we get a very dark version of the colour. This is called a shade of the colour.
