Interactive tools
Paint color mixer & color wheel
A free online paint mixer that mixes like real pigment: blue and yellow make green, complements make brown. Explore harmonies on a painter's color wheel, mix paints in any proportion, and build shadows without black.
Chromatic circle: harmonies, opposites, lights and shadows
Drag around the circle, pick a harmony (complementary, analogous, triadic, split, tetradic, square, mono), switch medium (oil, watercolor, crayon) and explore tints, shades, mixes and saved palettes.
Pigment mixer
Mix real paints
Choose up to three paints and set their proportions in parts. The mix is computed with a subtractive, pigment-like model, so the results behave like paint.
Shadow & highlight generator
Shadows without black
Pick a base color and get three shadow mixes: its complement, ultramarine or burnt umber. Then see tints, warm highlights and shades built from the shadow you choose.
How the paint mixer works
Screens mix light: red, green and blue add up toward white. Paint mixes pigments, and each pigment absorbs part of the spectrum. A mixture reflects only what all of its pigments let through. That's why averaging RGB values gives grey for blue + yellow, while real paint gives green.
Pigmento gives each paint a smooth reflectance curve across the visible spectrum (380–730 nm), fitted so it reproduces the paint's on-screen color. Mixtures are combined with a single-constant Kubelka–Munk model, the classic theory of light absorption and scattering in paint layers, with each paint weighted by its relative tinting strength. The result is converted back to a screen color.
Honest limits: this is an approximation. Real paints vary by brand, binder and opacity, glazing behaves differently from mixing, and monitors differ. Use the mixer to understand direction and proportion, and confirm on your palette.
Mixer FAQ
How accurate is the paint mixer?
It's a physically inspired approximation. Each preset paint has a smooth reflectance curve, and mixtures are combined with a single-constant Kubelka–Munk model weighted by tinting strength. It gets the important behavior right (blue + yellow = green, complements neutralize, white makes tints), but real brands, pigments and screens differ. Always test on your palette.
Why doesn't the mixer just average the colors?
Averaging RGB values describes mixing light, not paint. Paint works by absorbing light, so averaging blue and yellow gives grey instead of green. The mixer shows both results side by side so you can compare.
Which color wheel does the chromatic circle use?
A traditional painter's wheel, where red is opposite green, blue opposite orange and yellow opposite violet. Those pairs behave like complements when you mix pigments.