Mix a personal color of your own.
Mixing your own colors is a good way to learn about color, come up with some interesting room colors and use up paint from other jobs. It helps to know some basic color principles. Hue, the first, is easy; that's the "color" of the color, like red or green. Each color also has a value, indicating its lightness or darkness. Blue and yellow are different hues and yellow is naturally lighter, so as a result, yellow has a higher value. The third component of color is saturation. A color that is completely orange is more saturated than an orange with neutral gray mixed in. Keep these in mind as you mix to the color of your desire.
Instructions
1. Decide what color you'd like to achieve. Many colors exist besides the bright ones on the color wheel, and some of the in-between colors can look great in a room without being hard on the eyes.
2. Add your first tint to the paint and start mixing it. Add a green tint if you want a color in the green range; likewise for a color in the red range. Don't worry if you don't have the exact tint; you will refine and adjust your color as you go.
3. Make your first adjustment. If you want a chartreuse, which is a yellow-green, add yellow tint bit by bit (if you started with green) and keep mixing with the stir stick. Pigments vary in strength, so go slow.
4. Keep adjusting your color. Adding a tint in a color close to what is in your can that you have mixed already will produce a compromise. For example, if you have a paint color of yellow-orange and you add yellow, you'll pull the color towards the yellow. A blue tint added to a yellowy base hue makes it greener.
5. Attenuate the saturation if it is too bright by adding a neutral. Black or brown will lower the saturation, making colors less intense and adding a bit of an earthy feel to the color. You can also do this by mixing in a tint that is the complement. Thus, a yellow tint neutralizes paint in the purple range.
6. Continue adjusting and mixing until you have the color that pleases you.
