Everyone perceives color a bit differently, and our responses to certain colors or groups of colors are a matter of personal preference as well as psychology and perception. Some people love bright colors, some are attracted to pastels, some adore grays and blacks, and others are happiest when a wide variety of colors are combined. Color can make us feel excited, calm, happy, or wretched. Lighting also affects the way we perceive colors. Incandescent, fluorescent, and halogen bulbs make colors look more yellow, purple, or blue than they really are. Colors even look different in daylight depending on the time of day and whether it’s cloudy or sunny. The important thing to realize about using color in knitting is that there are no right or wrong combinations; there are just color groupings, or colorways, that have different effects.
Because people see and respond to color in such different ways, color can be extremely difficult to describe. This is not a color theory book, but we do need to be able to talk about color, so, for discussion purposes, I’m going to define three characteristics of color:
If you’re like me, you understand what hue is with no problem. Value also makes sense, but it’s difficult to determine value just by looking at an individual color. Saturation? This is where my eyes used to glaze over in formal discussions of color theory. But don’t worry: the examples below will give you a working understanding of all three of these concepts, especially as they relate to yarn and knitting.
Hue is what we think of most often as color. When you ask: “What color is it?” and the answer is “Red,” red is the hue. Hues are divided up into groups called primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. Color wheels make it easy to understand the relationships between colors.
Primary colors. Red, yellow, and blue are the standard primary colors. They are called primary because they are the first colors, the ones mixed together to make all other colors.
Secondary colors. You get secondary colors when you mix any of the primaries equally with another primary. Orange is made of red and yellow, green of yellow and blue, and purple (or violet) of blue and red.
Tertiary colors. Mix any primary color with a secondary color next to it to create a tertiary color. There are, of course, almost infinite gradations in hue between the hues. For example, this swatch shows gradations between blue-green and blue.
Analogous colors. Any group of three colors next to each other in the 12-color wheel are known as analogous colors. For example, orange, yellow-orange, and yellow are analogous colors. Any group of three neighboring colors, such as this one, can be used together to good effect.
You’ve probably heard colors referred to as warm or cool. This is just another way to group hues. Blues, greens, and mixtures of these are cool colors. Yellows, oranges, and reds are warm.
Context affects color temperature. Yellow-green and red-violet, mixtures of warm and cool colors, can appear either warm or cool, depending on context. For example, study the three twists of yarn above: Cover the blue twist at the top and notice that the purple in the middle seems cooler than the reddish purple at the bottom. Now cover the yarn at the bottom and note that the middle purple seems warm compared with the blue at the top. In a design, cool colors tend to recede, while warm colors seem to come forward toward the viewer.
Complementary colors. Colors that are directly across from each other on the color wheel are known as complementary colors. The arrow indicates the complementary colors red and green. Note that the tertiary colors on either side of each of these are also complements: red-violet is the complement of yellow-green, and red-orange is the complement of blue-green.
Context affects hue. Because of the way the human eye works, each color seems to impose its complement on any colors adjacent to it. For example, if you place green next to gray, it makes the gray look redder. On the other hand, if you place red next to gray, the gray looks greener. Blue yarn (B) twisted with yellow or orange still looks blue (C), but when twisted with turquoise it looks purple (A). Red-violet (E) looks burgundy when twisted with olive (F), but when twisted with violet it looks brown (D). This shift is far more noticeable in some lights (under a halogen lamp for example) than others, and it is why colors look one hue by themselves but may look completely different when combined with other colors.
Complementaries energize one another. When you use complementary colors together, they enhance each other: when green and red are next to each other, the red looks redder and the green looks greener. If the areas of each color are large, this effect may not be so noticeable, but if they are small, the colors really pop.
Complementaries provide accents. You can use this property to good effect — if you want a particular color to be more noticeable, include a bit of its complement. Compare the different parts of the swatch above. Where dark purple is used on the lighter purple background at the bottom the design is called monochrome, because it uses just one hue. It looks fine as is, but the colors become more exciting where a highlight of yellow, the complement of purple, was added. Depending on the yellow, it emphasizes either the dark or the light purple. Choose your color based on your personal preference and on the yarns you have available.
All of the hues I’ve used as examples so far are made by blending just two primaries together. The analogous colors yellow, yellow-orange, and orange, for instance, are made up of just yellow and red. You can, of course, create other colors not adjacent on the color wheel. When you do this, all three primary colors are included in the mix, which causes the resulting hue to be duller or muddier.
Besides helping us identify temperature, complements, and analogous colors, the 12-color wheel allows us to easily identify color harmonies, which are simply relationships between hues. They define groups of colors that work well together. There are seven color harmonies:
SPLIT COMPLEMENTARY. A hue, plus one hue on either side of its complement
DOUBLE-SPLIT COMPLEMENTARY. A hue, plus two hues on either side of its complement
TRIAD. Three hues equidistant on the wheel (Primaries are the most obvious example.)
DOUBLE TRIAD. Two trios of hues equidistant on the wheel
TETRAD. Two pairs of complements that form a rectangle on the wheel
SQUARE TETRAD. Two pairs of complements that form a square on the wheel
HEXAD. Three pairs of complements equidistant on the wheel (Note that there are only two possible hexads; all the primary and secondary colors make up one hexad and all the tertiary colors make up the second.)
Whether you are choosing colors from scratch or you already have one color of yarn and want to choose others to go with it, the color harmonies provide you with balanced groups that you know work together. If you can’t find a specific hue, look for something in its general neighborhood. For example, if you can’t locate a particular blue, try other blues to see if they work for you. Use the harmonies described here as a starting point when you don’t already know what you want. If you need to select additional colors, experiment to see what works best.
Value is perhaps the hardest color attribute to identify visually, but it simply refers to the amount of contrast between colors. If you look at a black and white picture of the color wheel, you can see that there is very little contrast between the reds and purples but a great deal between yellow and its neighbors.
Using value to define pattern. Value is important because it affects how subtle or how intelligible a pattern will be. A Fair Isle pattern in yellow on a blue background is far more noticeable than a pattern in purple on the same blue background. You can make both patterns intelligible, however, by using a paler blue for the background or by changing the foreground to a lighter purple. Remember that contrast is important: If you want colors to stand out, they should be darker or lighter than the colors around them. For a more subtle effect, choose colors that have a similar value.
Using background color to change relative value. Relative values of colors used together can make them appear lighter or darker. Blue, green, red, and yellow are each shown on progressively darker backgrounds (A). All the colors appear darker than the white background, and all appear lighter than black, but the amount of contrast varies depending on the value of the gray background. The relative values of these colors are far more apparent in dim light or in a black and white photo (B), where blue, green, and red merge with the middle gray, and yellow vanishes into the light-gray background.
It can be difficult to tell the relative values of balls of yarn just by looking at them, because we tend to notice the hues first. Luckily, there are several ways to test the relative values:
Saturation refers to the amount of pure hue that a color contains. For example, primary red is 100 percent saturated. Pink is just red mixed with white, so it’s a less saturated version of red, called a tint. Hues can be mixed with any other color, but when they are mixed with white, gray, or black, they are known as tints, tones, or shades, respectively. Each of the swatches below is green at one end and white, gray, or black at the other; in between, the stripes contain varying mixtures of both. You can achieve many variations even if you restrict yourself to just one hue — green.
TINT. Mixing a hue with white results in a tint.
TONE. Mixing a color with gray produces a tone.
SHADE. Mixing a hue with black produces a shade.
Saturation influences the value of a color, so it affects the amount of contrast. A color gets lighter when you mix it with white. When you mix it with black, it gets darker. But, if the gray you mix with a color has the same value the color had to begin with, its value stays the same, no matter how much gray you add.
If you don’t spin or dye your own yarn, you can’t completely control the hue, value, and saturation. However, you can collect colors at your local yarn store and at shows, as well as purchasing over the Internet and through catalogs. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to choose colors on the Internet or from a catalog. This might be a good excuse for purchasing a skein or ball of every possible color in every yarn you can find, so that you have a wide palette to experiment with. Or you may find it more practical to collect yarn sample cards for lines of yarn that come in many colors.
If you’re an intrepid adventurer who prefers to leave yourself open to serendipity and thrives on experimentation, pick some colors and start playing with them. Keep concepts of complementary relationships, value, and saturation in mind as you experiment. Vary the amount of each color you use until you get an effect you like.
If you prefer to exercise more control over your results and spend less time experimenting, you can put the color wheel and your knowledge of color harmonies to work. If you’ve got an idea for a project but no yarn, start from scratch with the color wheel and pick a color harmony you like, then look for yarn to match it. You’ll probably face situations where you’ve already got one or two colors and you want to add to your palette, especially if the two don’t look great together by themselves. You can use color harmonies to help select additional colors. See Do the Twist, below, for examples.
Use paint samples from paint or hardware stores or a large collection of colored pencils, crayons, or markers to document the colors you’ve selected. Refer to your reference collection of yarn sample cards to get an idea of what’s available in the marketplace, then sally forth to your yarn shop to gather just the right materials for your project.
STARTING WITH GOLD AND SALMON. Let’s say you’ve got orange and salmon (A), which don’t really inspire you, but you need to use the yarn. First, match them as closely as possible to the 12-color wheel. Gold matches best with yellow-orange and salmon with red-orange. Now let’s look at the possibilities. You can add orange, which falls between them, to make a group of analogous colors (B).
Twisting the yarns together helps you to see how the colors look when intimately combined, as well as to get a sense of their relative values. The orange and salmon in (A) are very close in value as well as in hue, so they tend to blend together. The gold in (B) is darker and stands out just a bit from the other two colors. It could effectively be used as a foreground against a salmon and orange background, or vice versa. If the salmon and orange are used alone, they tend to blend, and any color patterns will be difficult to see.
Add blue. You could add blue to make a split complementary color harmony. In this case, the gold and salmon are closer in value and hue, so they seem to blend while the blue stands out (C). Substitute a lighter tint of blue for a completely different effect (D).
Use both blues. This gives you a wide range of values to work with: light (light blue), medium (gold and salmon), and dark (dark blue) (E).
Add more colors. If you want to work with more colors, adding yellow and red as well as blue will give you a double-split complementary harmony. Once again, you end up with a range of values: yellow is light; salmon, and gold fall into the middle; and red and blue are dark (F).
For more complexity. If you have a selection of shades, tints, or tones, you can substitute lighter and darker versions of a color to achieve more variation in value, or you can include all the variations available. Adding light blue, apricot (which is a tint of gold), and pink (a tint of salmon) helps to provide more balance. There are now three light colors (blue, apricot, and yellow), two medium colors (gold and salmon), and two dark colors (red and blue). The extra strand of blue also helps balance the warm/cool color mix (G).
For greater simplicity. If including so many different yarns makes this colorway too busy for your taste, you can simplify it by sticking to shades of the two original colors and adding a single blue, a return to the split-complementary harmony. Dark blue makes a brighter combo, emphasizing the contrasts because of its dark value (H). Light blue creates a more pastel effect, with less contrast (I).
STARTING WITH GREEN AND BLUE. Using just these two colors makes a striking statement (J).
Adding analogous colors. What if you want something a bit more subtle? Since blue and green are close to each other on the color wheel, you can add blue-green to make a group of analogous colors (K). Don’t be afraid to add any color that falls within the analogous group: they all go together beautifully (L).
Adding a complement. As a highlight, you can always add a bit of one of the complements to these colors from the opposite side of the wheel (M).
DEALING WITH CLASHES. Sometimes you’ll have two colors close to each other in the color wheel that don’t look good together on their own; instead, they seem to clash. Red, red-violet, and violet are analogous colors, but they don’t always cooperate when in close proximity (N). One solution to this problem is to add as many shades, tints, tones, and blends of these colors as you can (O). Where two or three colors just look wrong, combining many variations looks much more acceptable.
SHADES, TINTS, AND TONES OF A HUE, PLUS NEUTRALS. Of course, you can always use shades, tints, and tones of any one hue together, and you can combine any color with white, gray, and black (P).
Once you’ve selected your colors, you need to decide what proportion to use them in. It can be very time consuming to swatch all the possibilities, so you may want to try a quicker method — wrapping cards. Wrapping at least twice with each color gives you an idea of how a stitch or a row will look. Play with the order of the colors and how much of each is used in proportion to the rest. To get an idea of how small amounts of highlight colors will look, weave them in with a yarn needle.
Wrapping cards to test color combinations.
Having trouble achieving what you want in a design? Here are some hints on how to make adjustments.
The pattern just isn’t visible. You need more contrast. Look for a paler tint or a darker shade of one or two of your colors.
So many colors, you don’t know what to do! If you have a large number of colors to deal with, organize them into groups to simplify the task. For example, put all the warm purples, reds, oranges, and yellows in one group and all the cool purples, blues, and greens in a second group. You might put very dark colors, regardless of hue, in one group and very light colors and neutrals in another. Develop your design based on the groups you’ve chosen, then, as you work, use colors at random from within each.
Toning things down. It’s too vibrant and you want something subtler. Knitting a fine strand of black, gray, or white along with your main yarn produces a flecked fabric (see below), which changes the effect through optical color blending. Color blending is most effective in simple pattern stitches that combine knits and purls, such as seed stitch. Knitting two strands of yarn, even if one of them is very thin, is like knitting with a thicker yarn — it can change your gauge or make the fabric too thick and stiff. To prevent this, you might substitute two strands of finer yarn. Adding a strand of woolly nylon (a thread used for serger sewing machines, available at fabric stores) will also modify the color with little effect on the gauge.
Toning things down
Livening things up. If your selection of colors seems dull and uninteresting, decide which color you’d like to emphasize and add its complement. If this doesn’t work, try removing the other colors one at a time to see if one is having a deadening effect or use a black or dark gray background to make the other colors seem brighter.
Need inspiration? Use the colors you find together in nature, photos, a piece of fabric, or any other object you like and develop your own colorways.
Inspiration
I designed fabric for a vest by pulling together many colors and organizing them in groups. The yarns were contributed by a group of hand spinners. The design challenge was to use some of each ball of yarn in a vest to be given as a birthday gift to the organizer of the group’s semiannual retreats. The donors’ only guideline was that the yarn should be purple. As you can see in the photo at the left, many of the donors ignored this restriction. The colors vary from almost black through pink, turquoise, and purple to grays and rusts. The yarns also varied in thickness from bulky to a fine strand of glittering purple Mylar.
After living with the yarn for a few weeks, I arranged it in piles on my sofa, contemplating and rearranging them over a period of days. I finally grouped it into what I mentally thought of as “brights” (pinks, light to medium purples, and some green and teal), “browns” (rusts, browns, and dark pinks), “pastels” (grays, pastel pinks, and some of the duller dark colors), and “darks” (black, dark purples, and dark grays). I created a fabric that used these groups in a specific order. Garter stitch ridges in the darks separate stripes of the other groups. Between the ridges, in seed stitch stripes, I used pastels, then brights, then browns, changing colors at random within each group every two rows. If I pulled a thinner yarn from the group, I either doubled it or knitted it along with a second color to provide consistency in thickness and more variation in appearance. The amount of each yarn I had available dictated the proportion of each color in the fabric.
Because you are working with yarn, you also need to take into account the properties of this material and its effect on color. A smooth yarn appears more color-saturated than a fuzzy yarn. Shiny yarns, whether silk, rayon, or metallic, seem lighter because of reflected highlights. Handpainted or space-dyed yarns change color along their length. They can be both a joy and a challenge to work with, so I’ve dedicated a large part of chapter 4 to them. Some yarns are made of different colors blended together before spinning, and others are made of solid colors plied together. Still others have individual plies in different colors that may change throughout a skein.
The effect of yarn structure
The effect of yarn structure. The complexity of the yarn affects the way the colors appear in the knitted fabric. For example, marled yarns (those twisted from plies of different colors) appear flecked when knitted up. The smaller the dots of color in the yarn, the more the colors blend in the finished fabric. The larger the spots or lengths of color, the less the colors blend in the fabric. Your gauge also has an effect on the appearance. The larger your stitches, the more noticeable the structure of the yarn and any flecks of color will be.
With so many factors affecting the final results, it’s very important to experiment with your yarn, your needle size, and any color or stitch patterns you’re considering, until you get the result you want. When you compose a colorway, there are a few practical considerations to keep in mind.
Combining fibers. As long as the yarns can all be cleaned the same way, you can certainly combine fibers. If you use one yarn that must be dry-cleaned and another that will dissolve in dry-cleaning chemicals, you’ve got an insoluble cleaning problem to cope with.
Combining thicknesses. If you have a variety of yarns of different thicknesses, choose your needle size based on the thickest of the yarns. This prevents the thicker sections from being too tight. Double your thin yarns or knit them along with other thin yarns so their size is more consistent with the thicker yarns. Wool sock yarn is available in many colors and works extremely well as an add-in for wool. Crochet cotton and embroidery floss are great carry-alongs with cotton or silk. But whatever varied yarns you choose, spread them throughout the fabric so that it has consistent stretch, weight, and thickness. On the other hand, you can also achieve a good effect by making the borders or the shoulder yokes of a garment from entirely different material than the rest, even knitting them at a different gauge on different-sized needles.
Using multiple strands. If you are using multiple strands of yarn to blend colors together throughout your garment, choose your needle size based on the thickness of the combined yarns. To find the suggested needle size, take all the yarns you plan to knit together, twist them lightly, then fold this twisted bundle in half and stretch it out flat across a knitting needle gauge. Your doubled twisted strand should just barely cover the hole of the suggested needle size. Use this size as a starting point when you knit a test swatch, and adjust to a larger or smaller needle until you like the feel and look of the fabric you’re creating.
Confirming dye lots. When you purchase yarn, check the labels on all the balls of the same color to make sure they are from the same dye lot. Even the best-quality yarns can vary in color from one batch to another, and you might not notice the slight difference in dye lots until after you’ve finished knitting. Also, the color in hand-painted yarns may change within the same dye lot, and even within the same skein. If you must use more than one dye lot or a skein where the color varies significantly, use the yarn in separate sections of the garment, where the colors won’t be placed against each other. Or blend the transitions by working alternate rows from the two balls of yarn. You can do this easily in circular knitting by simply working alternate rounds with each ball. In flat knitting, you can accomplish the same thing by using a circular needle and knitting one row with one yarn, then returning to the beginning of the row and knitting across again with the second yarn. Assuming you are working in stockinette, you would then turn your work, purl back with the first yarn, and then purl back with the second yarn. This may not be a practical solution if you are working a complicated pattern stitch, in which case you may want to work two rows of each color to simplify the process.
Avoiding the risk of running. Whenever you use two different colors of yarn in the same piece of knitting, you take the risk that the dye in one or both will run when they are washed, and the knitting may be stained beyond repair. It’s best to discover this problem before you start knitting, so test your yarn. If you’ve already knitted a swatch, wash it exactly the way you’ll wash the finished piece. Notice whether any of the dye bleeds into the water and whether any of it is absorbed into the other colors in the fabric. Roll it in a white paper towel and observe whether any dye transfers to the towel.
You can also test the yarn before knitting. Cut between a foot and a yard of each color and immerse the pieces, one at a time, in a small bowl of hot water; if the bowl is white, you can easily see whether the color of the water changes. Roll the yarn up in a white paper towel, or rub it against the towel to see if any dye transfers. If you see no sign of running, there should be no problem using the yarns together. If there is some running, you can wash the skeins of yarn before knitting.
If the yarn is already put up in balls, you’ll need to wind it into skeins and tie it in several places to prevent tangling before washing. Washing in hot water removes the dye more efficiently, but it may shrink the yarn (not a problem if you have plenty of yarn) or be harmful to some fibers. To prevent felting, be sure not to agitate animal fibers and to keep the water temperature consistent while washing and rinsing. To remove all of the excess dye, continue rinsing until the water is clear. Several products are available to help eliminate this excess dye, among them Synthrapol, a surfactant you can add to the wash water to remove excess dye, and Retayne, a fixative that helps set colors and prevent running. Both are available where quilting, dyeing, and art supplies are sold. Another option, Shout Color Catcher dye-trapping cloths (available at grocery and discount stores), are put in the washing machine to prevent red socks from turning the rest of your laundry pink, but you can also use them when handwashing to absorb dye that bleeds into the water.
