[Artwork: designslinger]

Someone was asking my advice the other day about using yellow as a wall color. During our
conversation I started using terms that she was not familiar with and decided that color, and yellow specifically, would make a good topic for a posting in a design blog.

[Images: Bananas; egg yolk ezee 123, via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]

As you may, or may not remember from grammar school, yellow is one prime secondary colors.
Now, for the dictionary definition:

                               "yellow: Color. The hue of that portion of the visible spectrum lying
                                 between orange and green; any of a group of colors of a hue resembling
                                 that of ripe lemons; one of the subtractive primaries; one of the
                                 psychological primary hues."

 Now, get ready - hue - it is the property of a color that can be perceived by the eye which ranges
from red through yellow, green and blue. Hue is basically the color itself, whether yellow, or blue, or orange, or green, or purple and so on and on.

[Image: Lemons /Artwork: designslinger]

Color can create a mood, or put you in a mood. Yellow is a vivid color, sometimes tropical in feel,
summery, bright, and not a color to be thrown around willy-nilly. It can be used to great effect as a room color, or as the back round of a print pattern on fabric. Many a classical Federal style dining room is wrapped in yellows as well as plush, cushy upper-eastside New York traditional living rooms. It can be a wonderful accent that adds a little zip, it helps to use the right complimentary colors so the yellows don't completely overwhelm you.

[Images: Buddhist monks, Pascal Rossignol/Rueters via guardian; Corn kernels /Artwork: designslinger]

The picture I saw of the monks, and the colors of the kernels of corn, struck me as a wonderful
example of the use of yellow in combination with other colors. Perhaps it is because some of the other colors contain yellow in them, or are good complimentary yellow hues. Note how similar the corn kernel colors are to the dyes used in the monks robes. This is a good way to figure out how one color can compliment another, just by looking at images and how the colors relate to one another. It can work for the entire color palette of a room from wall colors to fabrics.

[Images: Corn and arrow with blue /Artwork: designslinger]

No color really exists in a vacuum, all color lays against or near another color.
Yellow is very strong, and relates well to any number of color combinations, some better than others. As the image above demonstrates, yellow looks great with blue. As I said to our friend, simply because it is strong and vibrant, don't be afraid of it, just use it wisely, and it will bring much joy.