Paint Color Mixer (Hex or RGB)

Why this does not just average the two colors

Averaging is what light does. Shine a blue lamp and a yellow lamp at the same wall and you get something close to white, and averaging the two RGB values gives you the same answer: a flat gray. Paint does the opposite. Pigment works by subtracting wavelengths, so blue paint and yellow paint each remove part of what the other reflects, and what survives is green.

Every schoolchild knows blue and yellow make green. A color mixer that says gray is not simulating paint.

So this calculator converts both of your colors into RYB space, where red, yellow, and blue are the primaries a painter actually squeezes out of a tube, blends them there, and converts back to a hex code you can look at.

RYB primary mixing table:

• Red + Yellow → Orange (equal parts: warm orange; more red: red-orange; more yellow: yellow-orange)
• Yellow + Blue → Green (equal parts: true green; more yellow: yellow-green; more blue: blue-green)
• Red + Blue → Violet/Purple (equal parts: true purple; more red: red-violet; more blue: blue-violet)
• Red + Yellow + Blue → Brown/Gray (all three primaries mute the result)

Where the model is idealized, and it is worth knowing

The RYB “red” primary sits closer to magenta than to a cadmium red, which is exactly why the printing industry settled on magenta instead. Mix pure red and pure blue here and you get a vivid red-violet. Do it on a real palette with cadmium red and ultramarine and you get something much duller and browner, because cadmium red leans orange and that stray orange fights the blue. Reach for a quinacridone magenta or an alizarin crimson if you want the violet the screen shows you.

The preview also keeps the mix at full brightness. Real pigment loses a little chroma every time you combine two colors, so treat the swatch as the best case and expect the palette to come out slightly softer.

Tinting and shading:

• Tint = Color + White (increases lightness, reduces saturation)
• Shade = Color + Black (decreases lightness, reduces saturation, and black muddies fast so use it sparingly)
• Tone = Color + Gray (reduces saturation without strongly changing value)

White-to-color ratio for common tints:

• Pastel (light tint): 1 part color : 4 parts white
• Medium tint: 1 part color : 2 parts white
• Light-medium: 1 part color : 1 part white

Worked example: Mixing a custom sage green. Enter a mid-green as Color 1 (#4C7A3F), white as Color 2 (#FFFFFF), and set the ratio to 33% Color 1. That is the medium tint above, one part color to two parts white, and the swatch comes back a soft sage.

To deepen it, add a trace of raw umber, one or two teaspoons per quart. That knocks the brightness back without the deadening that gray or black would cause. Whatever the screen shows, test on the actual wall and let it dry, because wet paint reads 10 to 15% lighter than the film it becomes.