What Are Tertiary Colors? The Six Shades and How to Mix Them
Tertiary colors are the six in-between hues you get by mixing a primary color with the secondary color next to it on the color wheel. They're red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet and red-violet.
That's the short answer. The useful one is why these six matter when you actually paint. Most of the colors in a sunset, an autumn tree or a teal sea are tertiaries, or shades of them. Learn to see them and you'll mix better, blend better and finish a paint by numbers canvas with fewer surprises.
Key Takeaways
- A tertiary color is one primary plus its neighboring secondary, which gives six tertiaries on a 12-part color wheel.
- The primary is named first by convention: red-orange, never orange-red.
- Strong pigments overpower weak ones, so add the darker color in small amounts. Golden Artist Colors mixes bright green from 1 part phthalo green to 9 parts yellow.
- Mixing a primary with the secondary across the wheel gives brown or gray, not a tertiary.
- Paint by numbers kits pre-mix their tertiaries, so the skill you need is telling them apart, not mixing them.
What are tertiary colors?
Tertiary colors sit on the third tier of the traditional red, yellow and blue color wheel. The first tier is the three primaries: red, yellow and blue. Mix two primaries and you get a secondary, such as orange, green or violet.
Mix a primary with the secondary beside it and you land halfway between them. That halfway hue is a tertiary. Because each primary has two neighboring secondaries, three primaries give you exactly six tertiaries.
You'll also see them called intermediate colors. It's the same idea with a different name, and both terms appear in art textbooks.
What are the six tertiary colors?
Designers often know them by everyday names. A City University of New York design course lists tertiaries such as amber, magenta, teal, chartreuse and vermilion (CUNY City Tech OpenLab). Here are all six, with what goes into each and where you'll meet them.
| Tertiary color | Mix | Also called | Where you'll see it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yellow-orange | Yellow + orange | Amber, marigold | Sunflower petals, candlelight, golden hour |
| Red-orange | Red + orange | Vermilion, burnt orange | Autumn maples, sunsets, rust |
| Red-violet | Red + violet | Magenta, plum | Peonies, berries, dusk skies |
| Blue-violet | Blue + violet | Indigo, periwinkle | Night skies, lavender, shadows on snow |
| Blue-green | Blue + green | Teal, turquoise | Tropical water, peacock feathers |
| Yellow-green | Yellow + green | Chartreuse, lime | Spring leaves, new grass, sunlit moss |
Notice the naming rule. The primary always comes first, so it's yellow-green and not green-yellow. It's a convention rather than a law, but it's the one teachers and paint charts follow.
Where do tertiary colors sit on the color wheel?
On a 12-part wheel, the colors run in a repeating pattern: primary, tertiary, secondary, tertiary. Every tertiary sits directly between its two parents. That's why the wheel looks so smooth: the tertiaries are the steps that join the bigger jumps.
The wheel also explains a common mistake. Red and green aren't neighbors; they sit opposite each other as complements. Golden Artist Colors notes that mixing complements from opposite sides of the wheel yields black or gray (Golden Artist Colors, Color Mixing Guide). So red plus green gives you mud, not a tertiary.
There's an older definition worth knowing too. Some color theory calls the mix of two secondaries a tertiary. Orange plus green, for example, makes a muted olive. Those blends contain all three primaries, so they come out as earthy browns and slates rather than bright hues.
How do you mix tertiary colors with acrylic paint?
Start with the lighter color and add the darker one bit by bit. Pigments aren't equally strong, and a little dark paint goes a long way.
The numbers make the point. Golden's mixing guide makes bright green from 1 part phthalo green to 9 parts yellow (Golden Artist Colors). Its light red is 1 part magenta to 5 parts yellow. If you poured in equal amounts, the darker pigment would take over the mix.
A simple method for each tertiary
- Squeeze out the lighter parent (the yellow, or the orange for red-orange).
- Add a pea-sized dot of the darker parent and mix fully before judging.
- Swatch it on scrap paper and let it dry, because acrylics can shift slightly as they dry.
- Adjust in small steps until it sits halfway between the two parents.
Why your primaries change the result
Which red, yellow and blue you start with matters more than people expect. Golden says the specific primaries you choose "can dramatically change the secondary mixture" (Golden Artist Colors). That carries straight into your tertiaries. For instance, a cool blue that leans green makes a cleaner blue-green than a warm blue that leans violet.
If you want to practice, mix your own wheel. A basic acrylic paint set with a primary of each kind is enough to mix all six tertiaries on a sheet of card.
Which famous paintings use tertiary colors?
Look closely at almost any landscape or still life and the tertiaries are doing the heavy lifting. The pure primaries are often used sparingly, as accents.
Van Gogh's Sunflowers is a classic example. He painted five large canvases of sunflowers in a vase, in Arles in 1888 and 1889. He used three shades of yellow "and nothing else" (Van Gogh Museum). Those yellows slide toward yellow-orange in the petals and yellow-green in the stems.
His night skies work the other side of the wheel, with blue-violet and blue-green swirled against yellow stars. If you'd like to paint them yourself, our Van Gogh paint by numbers kits break those passages into numbered regions.
Autumn scenes are the easiest place to spot tertiaries in everyday life. Red-orange maples, yellow-orange birches and yellow-green leftovers of summer are why fall paint by numbers designs carry so many warm, close shades.
How do tertiary colors work in a paint by numbers kit?
In a kit, the mixing is done for you. Each pot is a ready-made color, and many of them are tertiaries or tints and shades of tertiaries. Our beginner kits usually carry about 24 colors, intermediate kits about 36 and advanced kits 48 or more.
That's where the skill shifts from mixing to seeing. A red-orange pot and an orange pot can look almost identical in the lid, then read clearly different on the canvas. Our guide to telling similar shades apart covers the swatch test that settles it.
Tertiaries also make blending easier. A soft sunset goes yellow, yellow-orange, orange, red-orange, red. Each step is a short jump, so feathering the borders is forgiving. Our tips on blending colors in paint by numbers show how to soften those edges.
We also show a color preview before you order, so you can see how a design's palette looks before a single pot arrives. Our high-opacity paint helps a light tertiary like yellow-green cover the printed numbers underneath. Want a canvas full of in-between shades? Browse our paint by numbers kits for adults and pick a design rich in sunsets or foliage.
A quick exercise with your next kit
Before you paint, line up the pots in color-wheel order. Find the primaries first, then the secondaries, then slot the tertiaries between them. It takes five minutes, and you'll never grab the wrong orange again.
Frequently Asked Questions
There are six tertiary colors on the traditional 12-part color wheel: red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet and red-violet. Each one mixes a primary color with its neighboring secondary. With three primaries and three secondaries, the wheel totals 12 colors, and half of them are tertiaries.
Not under the standard definition. Brown comes from mixing complementary colors, or all three primaries, which lowers the chroma. Golden Artist Colors notes that mixing complements from opposite sides of the wheel yields black or gray (Golden). Under an older definition, mixing two secondaries also gives tertiary browns like russet and olive.
No. Pink is a tint of red, made by adding white, so it isn't on the 12-part wheel as its own hue. A pink that leans purple is a tint of red-violet, which is a tertiary. White changes how light a color is, not which hue family it belongs to.
A secondary color mixes two primaries: orange, green or violet. A tertiary mixes one primary with one neighboring secondary, so it sits halfway between them. There are three secondaries and six tertiaries on the standard wheel, and the tertiaries fill the gaps that make the wheel look smooth.
Start seeing the colors in between
Tertiary colors are simple to define and endlessly useful. Six hues, one rule: a primary plus its neighbor. Once you know them, autumn leaves, teal seas and Van Gogh's yellows all make more sense, and your next canvas comes together with fewer guesses.
