Before we get into how to correct color we need to discuss basic color theory.

Understanding color theory will make corrections so much easier and more fun! It's like a puzzle just waiting to be solved.

Colors are divided into several categories that assist with mixing and creating new colors:

Primary Colors

Secondary Colors

Tertiary Colors

Complementary Colors

Primary colors are the base for all other colors and cannot be created by mixing other colors together.

Secondary colors are created by mixing 2 primary colors together.

Blue + Yellow = Green

Red + Blue = Purple

Yellow + Red = Orange

Mixing a primary color with a secondary color creates a tertiary color.

For example, mixing blue (primary) with green (secondary) creates teal (tertiary).

Color Wheel

The color wheel is an artist's resource for easily observing primary, secondary, and tertiary colors all in one place.

The color wheel really helps us simplify how to create certain colors!

All you need to know is that the 3 primary colors cannot be created by mixing other colors, so always use those are your base when moving from one color to the next.

Complementary Colors

Complementary colors are colors that, when mixed together, cancel each other out.

When you look at the color wheel, and observe which colors are opposite each other on the wheel, you can see each colors complement, or opposite color.

Orange is the complement of Blue.

Green is the complement of Red.

Purple is the complement of Yellow.

When you mix complementary colors together you usually tone down both colors and create a brown or grey tone (depending on the proportions you use).

Another way to figure out a color’s complement is to make it figure out which primary color is missing from the mixture that you have.

For example:

Blue + Yellow = Green

Which primary color is missing from this equation?

Red!

Green (which is Blue + Yellow) + Red = Brown

Your aim when color correcting is to balance the prominent tone, so if you are able to make your primary color hues more equal in proportion to each other you will cancel them out and get a more neutral tone.

Let’s look at another example:

Red + Yellow = Orange

Which primary color is missing?

Blue!

To get brown your equation could be written two different ways:

Red + Yellow + Blue = Brown

or

Orange + Blue = Brown

Same thing 😊

Orange is the complement of Blue!

You could also use this concept of color math to help with tertiary colors.

For example:

We have Violet

Violet = Blue + Purple (which is Blue + Red), so Violet = Blue + Blue + Red

What are we missing to complement this?

We’re missing Yellow!

But wait, we have extra blue in here, so we need to balance that as well… What is the complementary color to blue? Orange!

To balance Violet we need Yellow and Orange.

Yellow + Orange = Amber (which is the opposite of violet on the color wheel).

Mixing math and color is a bit complicated…

When in doubt, you should be able to check out a color wheel and look to the opposite side to find the complementary color necessary to cancel the tone you want to correct, but it’s still good to understand why we select this color and how to find it on your own as well.

Complementary colors are the base for all our color corrections!

Hue, Value, Saturation & Temperature

Now we understand the basics of color and how to use color to create, or cancel other colors, but that’s not all we need to know about color!

Within each color we also have hue, value, saturation and temperature.

Hue is the pure color, or dominant color - usually a color you can refer to from the color wheel that does not have other colors mixed into it yet (a primary color or secondary color).

Value refers to how light or dark a color is. Having a dark value means the color contains more black, having a light value means the color contains more white.

Saturation refers to how intense the hue is. A hue with high saturation is usually vivid and bright, a hue with low saturation is usually more dull and grey. Another term used for saturation is chroma.

Note: In permanent cosmetics we also use the term saturation to refer to how much pigment is in the skin. If the skin is like a sponge, how much color is it holding? This type of saturation is different than when we are referring to the saturation of the color itself.

Temperature is whether is more cool or warm. We refer to the temperature very often in permanent cosmetics.

Cool usually means that there is a blue hue present, or lower saturation (more grey).

Warm usually means that a red hue is present.

Sometimes we refer to a color as neutral, this usually means that there is a yellow hue present.

It can be difficult to determine the temperature of a color, especially since each color has a version of itself that could be warm or cool.

Take a look at these swatches of the primary colors and how their temperature changes as they move towards being warmer or cooler.

You can see that if we kept going on the color spectrum that our primary colors would eventually turn to secondary and tertiary colors, as well as all the different temperatures in-between – creating our color wheel! Yay, we love our color wheel 😊

Try to determine the base of the hue (blue, red, or yellow), to help you figure out the temperature.

Strength

Some colors are stronger than others.

A good example of this is blue vs yellow. It only takes a small amount of blue to overtake yellow, and takes a lot of yellow to counter the blue.

Darker colors are more powerful than lighter colors, so anytime you need to mix a darker color into a lighter one be conservative and only add a little at a time.

Learning the strength of a color usually comes from experience. Once you have worked with certain colors for a while you intuitively know their properties.

Why Does Color Theory Matter for PMU?

These basic concepts of color theory can be applied to permanent cosmetics as well.

When selecting a color for eyebrows we observe things like skin undertone, fitzpatrick level, hair color and the client’s personal preference.

When doing color corrections we still need to keep these factors in mind, but also have to neutralize the color that’s already present in the brows! For some, this task seems too monumental – but not for artists like us, we rise to the challenge.

How will we neutralize a color?

In simplified terms, we want to find the complementary color to the color in the skin and apply that to neutralize that tone.

Remember, complementary colors are opposite each other on the color wheel, so you can reference your wheel if you’re not sure.