Apparel Designing and Construction

Apparel Designing and Construction 3(1+2)

Lesson 6 : Elements of Design- Color

Theories of Color

The theories of colour enable us to understand the different perspectives that played important role in establishing the colour as phenomenon and its interaction in the environment. There are three theories of colour as given below:

1. Light theory
2. Pigment theory
3. Psychological theory

Light theory

It is also called as additive colour system. According to this theory there are three primary colours, red, green and blue and is, therefore, referred to as RGB. It states that light from any source when pass through the atmosphere/ medium, it gets refracted into component hues. We get secondary hues on mixing these any two of three primary hues and white is obtained by adding three primaries in equal amount. Televisions and colour monitor colours by using the primary colours of light. It starts with dark background where red, green and blue lights mix to produce colours.

Pigment theory

It is also known as subtractive colour system. According to this theory there are four primary colours, cyan, magenta, yellow and black and is, therefore, referred to as CMYK. Substractive colour starts with an object that reflects light and uses colourants (pigments) to subtract the portion of white light illuminating an object to produce other colours. If all light is reflected, an object appears white and when all light is absorbed, object will appear black. Colour paintings, fabric printing, etc. uses substractive process to reproduce colour. The two colour systems viz., Prang colour system and Munsell colour system are also based on pigment theory.

Psychological theory

The psycholog­ical theory was given by Ostwald in 1916; include system based on white, black and four psychologically distinct major hues namely, red, green, blue, and yellow and with total 24 hues. Each hue has its own triangular page making the total colours as per this theory comes out to be 672 plus 8 neutral to 680. Instead of tint, shade and intensity, the dull colours are described by saturation (white), brightness (black) and tone (gray). The notation used for each colour consists of a number for hue and two letters indicating values fir white and black, respectively. For example, a light dull yellow colour can be indicated by 1ec where ‘1’ indicates hue, ‘e’ the amount of white and ‘c’ the amount of black in the colour.