What Does Red and Blue Make?

If you combine red and blue, how would they look? Purple just pops into our head, but is that the right color? Let me know if you have a color system in mind? And how would the percentage differ for each color? You can expect varying answers when considering various factors! Again, let me ask, what does red and blue make?

Our next step will be to look at some possible solutions! Here I used Dopely’s Color Mixer Tool to illustrate how mixing red and blue produces different colors in result. Similarly, if you choose to use a different color system or proportion of dominant colors, you can do it! Very easy to use, yet very professional!

Why combining additive and subtractive colors result in different colors?

If you mix all the colors of light which are additive, what do you end up with? White light. But if you mix all the colors of paint which is subtractive what color do you end up with? Black paint. This is the primary difference. With light, you are mixing wavelengths together, adding them up to some color. With paint, you are removing colors. For instance, red paint absorbs all wavelengths except for red. And if you have green paint, it will absorb all wavelengths except for green. So, mixing them together, you will absorb all wavelengths.

This is why with light you want to use the primary colors- colors which are a single wavelength, while with paint you want to use secondary colors- colors which reflect multiple wavelengths. For instance, yellow reflects red and green, while magenta reflects red and blue. So, mix yellow and magenta together, and you’ll get red (since yellow absorbs everything but red and green, magenta everything but red and blue, leaving only red). It may seems confusing at first, but when you start to get the point, you will see how simple it is.

What does red and green make using subtractive color systems?

Like in painting, what happens if you mix red and blue? In the real world we have more than 16 millions colors, but obviously you can’t buy 16 millions of color tubes, right? And lots of artists or painters would buy only 3, 6, 12, 24, 48 or 64 set of color tubes and they will make the rest by combining them.

Mixing result of 30% red and 70% blue: Purple

In decades past, purple was the most expensive color. But why? Creating purple was difficult, time-consuming and expensive. They had to find thousands of snails and crack their shells, then soak the snails and extract their juice, and then place them in a basin under sunlight. The juice would transform from white to yellow-green, then to green, then violet, and finally a red that got darker and darker. When it was the right moment, they would stop it. That was so cruel, thank goodness we stopped making purple from snails!

Mixing result of 50% red and 50% blue: Fresh Eggplant

Fresh Eggplant color is primarily a color from Violet color family. It is a mixture of blue and red color. You can see its color codes in different color systems here.

Mixing result of 70% red and 30% blue: Lipstick

Yeah, this is kind of medium dark shade of pink you may love when it sits on lips! I personally love this color, it can be represented in harmonious color palettes whether with pastel colors or in dark mode. You can find its converting color code in different systems here.

What does red and blue make using additive color systems?

A process of mixing colored lights is known as additive mixing. The primary colors for additive mixing are red, green, and blue. Putting all of these colors of light on a screen at the same time will result in white. as you can see in the picture below, if you mix blue light and red light in equal proportion together, you will see magenta! Interesting, yeah? Do you want to know other fun results of mixing colored lights together? You can use premium version of Dopely color mixer tool!