Colour harmony of two‐colour combinations using a 3D colour configuration

Abstract

Over the past few years, although many studies have investigated colour harmony, most of those used the planar colour configuration, which is not in line with the design requirements of real‐life products. Therefore, this study used 11 basic colours and five types of colour scheme techniques to derive 141 colour combinations applied upon a physical 3D colour configuration to observe the phenomena of colour harmony. The results show that colour harmony on a 3D colour configuration is different from that on a planar colour configuration, and can be divided into four phenomena: (i) lightness difference was found to determine the colour harmony while achromatic colour was configured with achromatic colour; (ii) lightness sum prompted colour harmony while chromatic colour was configured with achromatic colour; (iii) lightness sum and chroma sum were found to determine colour harmony while chromatic colour was configured with chromatic colour with a two‐colour hue angle difference >90°; and (iv) lightness sum and hue difference were a determination of colour harmony while chromatic colour was configured with chromatic colour with a two‐colour hue angle difference of ≤90°. On the basis of these phenomena, this study develops a colour harmony model based on the colour parameters, most of which are derived from the addition of the colour attributes of two colours.