What Color Purple and Blue Make When Mixed?

What happens when a primary color – blue combines with a secondary color – purple? Let’s uncover this beautiful mix in this blog post.

The entire planet would definitely be dull in white and black, which is why we have so many colors to spice things up. Colors, as gorgeous as they are, have several intriguing characteristics that make them even far more fascinating to explore. 

When combining purple and blue, you must combine a primary and a secondary color. When these colors are combined, the tertiary color blue-violet is formed. However, that is an overly simplistic answer to the common question of what color is formed when purple and blue are blended. The resulting color depends heavily on how much of every color you use.

So, without any further ado, let’s explore it right now!

2 Color Mixer Tool: Purple and Blue

As you are searching for the color that purple and blue can make, here is our color mixer tool for you to combine two colors with the default value is 50 percent each color:

What Color Do Blue and Purple Create As Combining Paint?

Blue, as some of you might know, is a primary color, while purple is a secondary color. These two colors combine to form blue-purple, also known as blue-violet, which is also considered a tertiary color. There are numerous blue-purple hues, including famous hues such as periwinkle, lavender, indigo, and violet, indigo. Nonetheless, blue-purple is the greatest idea for a 50/50 combination.

The Basic Knowledge of Tertiary Colors

Generally speaking, tertiary colors are formed when a primary color is combined with a secondary color that is adjacent to it on the color spectrum. The RYB (Red Yellow Blue) color wheel has six major tertiary colors, including yellow-green, blue-green, blue-purple, red-purple, red-orange, and yellow-orange. As you might expect, every color is a 50/50 blend of the two colors mentioned in its name.

Various Kinds of Blue-Purple

Basically, there are numerous shades of blue-purple, a few far bluer than the others. Such various shades of blue-purple are made by combining more purple or blue, using various purple and blue, or simply adding black and white to the combination.

For instance, if you combine light purple and blue, you will get a periwinkle or lavender color. Navy blue combined with purple can produce a darker and deeper purple.

If you add more purple or blue, you may get plum, lilac, indigo, or mauve. These colors are all different shades of blue-purple, but their blends are not exactly even.

How to Lighten or Darken Blue-Purple

If you have a flawless combination of purple and blue, there are many things you can do to make it more distinctive. So, here are a few suggestions for lightening or darkening your blue-purple.

Lighter Color Combinations

Simply adding a bit of white to the color will end up making it lighter. However, this may take a lot of white to make a noticeable difference. However, using lighter purple or blue to start with might also result in a brighter tint.

Darker Color Combinations

Even though this combination is generally dark to start with, trying to add a touch of black could really make it darker. Just keep in mind that use black sparsely because it can rapidly overwhelm the other colors. In addition, adding darker shades, such as navy blue, might also change the color and end up making it less vibrant.

Is there too much blue?

In case you choose to combine purple and blue, please remember that purple already contains blue as one of its elements. As such, if you really want a more even tint, you should probably add more purple rather than blue. By doing this way, the blue will not outclass the purple.

Analogous Color Combination

On the color wheel, purple and blue are adjacent, so they are regarded as analogous colors. Generally speaking, any three colors in line on the color wheel are often referred to as analogous, owing to their membership in the very same color family. 

There are advantages and disadvantages to blending analogous colors. Because the colors are nearly equal to each other, they accompany one another and work well together. In reality, analogous colors are practically impossible to mix. The different way of looking at it, nevertheless, is also truly the case. When you combine analogous colors, you get almost no wide range of visual appeal.

How to Make Analogous Color Combinations More Interesting?

Since combining analogous colors could really be monotonous, it does not have to be dull. By varying the amounts of gray, white, and black, you can completely create an infinite number of tones, shades, and tints. So, combining purple and blue may result in a deep and rich tint that you could then experiment with to generate extra tints and shades.

Is There a Meaning to Blue-Purple?

In general, blue-purple does not have a single specific meaning. Having said that, because it is a flawless combination of purple and blue, it contains some meanings from both colors. In particular, blue is associated with faith, safety, and devotion, whereas purple is associated with secrets, royalty, and creativeness.

Blue-purple could represent integrity, dedication, and freedom. It symbolizes solid bonds and beliefs, as well as hope and enthusiasm for the years ahead. A lot of people associate various shades of blue-purple with creativity, tranquility, and miracles.

A fantastical color like blue-purple is completely convinced to pique the interest of others. So, although it may not be as popular as blue or purple, it is still an excellent color to incorporate into your designs. You can choose which meaning you would like to express through your paintings.

Is it possible to create colors to make purple and blue?

If you don’t really have purple and purple paint available while painting, you can easily make them by combining other colors. However, because blue is a primary color, the combination is not as really clear. To get blue, you will need to use subtractive color blending with the CMYK color model that is mostly used for printing ink. Cyan and magenta, according to the color wheel, will result in blue.

Purple is far simpler to blend because it is a secondary color. Basically, it is made of half blue and half red. When you combine blue and purple, you will get purple with an additional blue added to the resulting color.

When blue and purple lights are mixed, what color do they produce?

In terms of lighting, both purple and blue are rarely combined because the light color model (often known as RGB) employs violet rather than purple. Violet, as some of you might know, is a tertiary color made up of blue and magenta.

When you combine the tertiary color violet with the primary color blue, you get a mildly blue-violet color. You might also call it the light comparable to blue-purple.

Understanding the Various Color Models

Color blending uses three major different color models, including RGB, RYB, and CMYK. All of these three models are used for various purposes, and when various colors are blended, they produce different results. Acknowledging these color models, as well as the distinction between subtractive and additive color combinations, will make you realize why purple and blue are infrequently blended in lighting.

RGB Color Model

Basically, RGB, also known as Red Green Blue, is the additive color model and is used mostly for light mixing. The primary colors in lights include blue, green, and red instead of blue, yellow, and red. As a result, their blends vary markedly. Green and red are mixed to generate yellow, while blue and red create magenta, and green and blue are combined to form cyan in this color model.

RYB Color Model

RYB is generally the subtractive color model that lots of people can identify because it is taught in slightly earlier art classes. In general, this color wheel is often used to combine paint and other tactile art mediums. In the RYB color model, there are 3 major colors, including blue, yellow, and red. All other colors could be created by combining those two.

CMYK Color Model

For those who don’t know, the CMYK color model is considered a subtractive one and is mostly used in printing and ink. On this color wheel, yellow, magenta, and cyan are the three primary colors. All three colors combine to form black. In this CMYK color model, simply combine magenta and cyan to create blue, yellow and magenta to create red, and yellow and cyan to create green.

Color Perception in Human Eyes

As we look at something, it absorbs all of the colors in the visible spectrum of light apart from the one we deem. For instance, when you look at a red strawberry, it typically absorbs the green and blue colors and then reflects the red. As a result, our eyes perceive the strawberry as red.

Color-sensing cones exist in our eyes. Specifically, on the RGB color model, we generally have cones for the primary colors, which are blue, green, and red. When various amounts of these colors are mixed together, we see color blends.

Your eyes’ cones identify wavelengths in the visible spectrum of light. Color perception is determined by the colors reflected off an item and the recurrence of the wavelengths that our eyes deem.

When detecting the colors, our brain will then handle them in a specific way. So, whenever you look at a brightly colored object, there’s a lot more taking place than you come to realize. That is why color blending for lights differs so greatly from color combining for ink or pain.

Violet V.s Purple: What’s the Difference?

Basically, both violet and purple are commonly used interchangeably. Having said that, they are two distinct colors. Purple is a 50/50 mix of red and blue, whereas violet includes slightly less red than blue.

When comparing the colors, the distinction between the two is reasonably observable. Basically, violet is the color as well as visible spectrum wavelength used in the rainbow.

Using Purple and Blue in Design

Generally speaking, both purple and blue are cool colors that complement each other well in design. They can also be matched with blue-purple colors of any tint and shade. Using colors that are close to one another on the color wheel is an excellent way to create a visually appealing design. Colors such as green, turquoise, and pink may complement blue-purple, purple, and blue.

Blue-purple looks perfect when combined with neutral colors such as tan, black, white, and gray white, especially when designing a living space. Quite so many colors in residence could be overpowering, so just a bit of blue-purple shade in an otherwise neutral area is satisfying. For instance, you can have a gray sofa but add blue-purple paintings, flowers, or pillows to make it more palatable.

When creating a logo or advertisement, you may want to use contrasting colors, including those on the contrary side of the color wheel. The phrases or pictures in your design would then stand out even more as a result. Yellow and orange, as you might know, are complementary colors to blue-purple. Nevertheless, combining blue-purple with those colors is only appropriate for certain situations as it can form a vivid and somewhat disorganized appearance.

Besides, blue-purple is a lovely color that is also known as periwinkle, lavender, or violet. It is an excellent color for graceful and harmonious designs. While using it in multiple graphic designs or pieces of artwork, keep its layers of meaning in mind. Blue-purple, just like purple and blue, makes people feel calm, comfortable, and confident, and it may even stimulate their imagination.

Bottom Line

What color do purple and blue produce when blended together? This seemingly easy question has a plethora of answers. It is entirely dependent on a variety of aspects. You will get the best answer if you try it on your own.