What Two Colors Make Brown?

Why complementary colors make brown: complementary pairs, when mixed, cancel out each other's saturation (their "colorfulness"), pulling the result toward a neutral, desaturated tone rather than a vibrant new color. Depending on the exact ratio and the specific reds/greens or blues/oranges used, that neutral tone lands somewhere in the brown-to-gray range.

Other combinations that also produce brown

• All three primary colors together (red + yellow + blue) also produces a brown/muddy tone, for the same complementary-cancellation reason.
• Orange and a small amount of black or blue can darken orange into a warm brown.
• Red and yellow, then adding a touch of blue or black, is a common way painters mix a specific brown shade rather than getting an unpredictable one from complementary pairs alone.

Getting different shades of brown: the ratio between the two colors determines the exact shade — more red than green shifts it toward a reddish-brown, while more green shifts it cooler, closer to olive-brown. Adding white lightens it toward tan; adding black darkens it toward a deep umber.

Paint mixing vs. light mixing: this applies to subtractive mixing (paint, ink, pigments), which is what almost everyone means by "what colors make brown." Mixing light (additive mixing, like on a screen) works differently and doesn't produce brown from red and green light in the same way — that combination actually produces a shade of yellow in light mixing.

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