Natalie Rose Design Studio: Ready kids..its time for a colour lesson

During some down time at work today I was flipping though one of my interior design books and came across some information on colour. To refresh my memory on the subject (and to refresh yours as well) I am blogging about it. I find it rather interesting to be honest. Here is a little lesson:

Hue: The attribute by which we recognize and describe a colour, such as "red" or "blue". Another word for colour

Value: The degree of lightness or darkness of a colour in relation to white and black
-Pure yellow is lighter in value than pure blue
-The value of a colour can be raised by adding white and lowered by adding black. Lighting a hues normal value by adding white creates a tint of that hue and darkening the hue's value with black creates a shade of that hue. In other words, TINT=addition of white to a hue and SHADE=addition of black to a hue

Saturation: The brilliance or dullness of a colour. This depends on the amount of hue in the colour
-If white, black or a complementary colour is added to a colour to lighten or darken its value, its saturation will be diminished

Analogous hues: Colours that are beside each other on the colour wheel
-yellow, yellow-green, green

Primary hues: Red, yellow, blue

Secondary hues: Orange, green, violet

Tertiary hues: Red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, red-violet

Things to keep in mind when selecting colours (such as paint):

Warm light accentuates warm colours and neutralizes cool colours
Cool light intensifies cool colours and weakens warm colours
In some cases colours will look different at the office or at the store then they will where they are going to be applied
It is best to choose paint in an environment that has natural light
Cool colours, light values, and greyed colours are often used to make a space appear larger in width or height (a red wall at the end of a room will look closer to you then the same wall being painted light grey in another room)

Interesting information about colour:

Dark values (see definition above) and saturated colours suggest nearness
Warm hues are visually stimulating and active, cool hues have a more calming effect

-All information from "Second Edition- Interior Design Illustrated" by Francis D.K Ching. I took this information and arranged it in this way I did not write it on my own.

Here are some helpful images: