Primary colour: Quick Facts

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Facts

Also Known As	primary hue • primary color

Photos

A Venn diagram shows the three primary colors of light-green, blue, and red-as overlapping circles. Their intersections create cyan, magenta, yellow, and white at the center, illustrating additive color mixing.

A diagram of Newton's prism experiment shows a beam of white sunlight entering a glass prism and emerging as a spread of colors labeled red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

A Venn diagram of the RGB color model shows overlapping red, green, and blue circles. Where the circles overlap, secondary colors magenta, yellow, and cyan appear, with white at the center where all three mix, illustrating additive color mixing.

Radial gradient color wheel with smooth transitions between blue, pink, red, yellow, and green, radiating from the center.

A Venn diagram of the RYB color model shows overlapping red, yellow, and blue circles. Their intersections create secondary colors: orange, green, violet, and black at the center where all three overlap.

A circular RYB color wheel divided into twelve segments, showing a progression of colors from red, orange, and yellow to green, blue, and violet.

Two color wheels side by side: the left wheel displays primary, secondary, and tertiary colors labeled in segments; the right wheel shows the same segments in grayscale to represent inherent tonal values.

Diagram showing the subtractive primary colors of pigments: yellow, cyan, and magenta as overlapping rectangles, with secondary colors green, red, and blue where they intersect, and black at the center where all three overlap.

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Topics

magenta cyan Yellow Blue Green Red colour Complementary color RGB color model Color wheel What color is the universe?tristimulus system Are Black and White Colors?Black White Orange Brown

Key People

Mondrian, photograph by Arnold Newman, 1942.

Piet Mondrian

Dutch painter