How to use
- 1Pick paints from the list (primaries or pigments such as titanium white, ultramarine, burnt sienna) or enter your own colour.
- 2Enter how many parts of each paint you use; you can add up to 6 paints.
- 3Check the mixed colour, its HEX code and the tints and shades made with white and black.
- 4To match a specific colour, choose it under “How do I mix this colour?” and search for a recipe.
Why averaging colours on screen is misleading
Screens mix light (RGB), so averaging yellow and blue on screen gives a greyish colour. Real paint works the other way: pigments absorb part of the light and reflect the rest, which is why yellow and blue paint make green. This tool uses the Kubelka-Munk model from the open-source spectral.js library: it estimates a reflectance curve for each colour and mixes them the way pigments do. The plain RGB average is shown next to it for comparison.
Colour mixing chart and RYB wheel
The mixing chart on this page is computed with the same engine and covers the questions people ask most: red + yellow = orange, yellow + blue = green, white + red = pink, red + green = brown, and ultramarine + burnt sienna for a warm dark that many painters use instead of black. On the traditional painter’s RYB wheel the primaries are red, yellow and blue; complementary pairs (red–green, blue–orange, yellow–violet) neutralise each other. For a clean violet, choose a bluish red such as alizarin crimson or magenta rather than an orange-leaning cadmium red.
Finding a target colour – and the limits
The recipe finder tries two- and three-paint combinations of the selected pigments at many ratios and ranks the three closest by perceptual difference (OKLab ΔE). Treat the result as a starting point: paints with the same name differ between brands, student and artist grades and pigment loads, and strong pigments such as phthalo dominate in tiny amounts. Test a small amount on your palette first. The preset pigment colours are approximate screen values, not data from any manufacturer.
Frequently asked questions
What colors make brown?
Mixing complementary colours makes brown: red + green, orange + blue or yellow + violet. Mixing all three primaries (red, yellow, blue) also gives brown; the ratio decides whether it is warm or cool.
How do you mix a skin tone?
Start with plenty of white, some yellow ochre and a little red (for example 6 : 2 : 1). Add burnt sienna or burnt umber for deeper skin tones. The skin tone row in the chart shows this mix.
How can I mix a dark without black?
Ultramarine blue with burnt sienna or burnt umber gives a rich, warm dark that many painters prefer to tube black. Shift the ratio for a bluer or browner dark.
Will my real paint look exactly like this?
No, it is an on-screen estimate. Brand, quality, opacity, darkening as the paint dries and your screen’s calibration all change the result. Use the tool to get a ratio to start from.
Where is the mixing calculated?
Entirely in your browser. The mixing engine (spectral.js, MIT licence) is loaded from a CDN when the page opens; your colours are not sent to any server.
Add this tool to your website
Paste the code below into your site’s HTML; the tool runs on your page and stays up to date automatically.
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