What Colors Make Mauve? What Two Colors Make Mauve

This article will talk about the two colors that make mauve.

What instantly comes to mind when you hear the word mauve? Drawing a blank? Many people are aware of lavender, purple, and fuchsia, but are not familiar with the color mauve.

When you hear the word mauve, you may think of a lighter shade of purple, and you’d be partially right.

If you are wondering what two colors make this hue, then read on…

People who work with colors, such as painters, make-up artists, and designers, know the importance of knowing how to mix colors in order to get new ones. This is especially useful if you do not have your preferred shade, tint, or tone on hand.

Because of this, it is important to be adventurous in exploring the range of colors your current materials can create.

When exploring the palette, artists know the importance of mixing primary, secondary, and even tertiary colors. This allows them to create an almost infinite number of hues, tones, shades, and tints.

Want to know how to mix colors in order to get mauve? You need to understand color theory first.

Color Theory at a Glance

As a budding artist, you probably first learned a crude version of color theory from your primary school teacher. In your lessons, you learned about the color wheel, which is composed of primary, secondary, and tertiary colors.

Primaries refer to the base colors used to create secondary colors. They are red, blue and yellow.

When you mix one primary color with another, you get secondary hues; namely purple, orange, and green.

You get tertiary colors when you mix a primary and a secondary hue. When you place these colors in a circle, you get the color wheel.

So, is mauve a primary, secondary, or tertiary color? The answer is none of the above.

It is actually a tint of a secondary color. But what is a tint?

A tint is basically a color that results from adding white to a hue. When you add black, you get a tone, while adding gray results in a shade of one particular color.

This explanation gives you an idea of an important factor in making mauve. However, how exactly do you create this hue?

Read on…

What Two Colors Make Mauve

When you visualize a color wheel, you need to imagine the mauve being positioned between red and blue. More specifically, it is between pink and violet.

So, what two colors do you need to combine to make this hue? The simple answer is just a bit of red and blue.

However, keep in mind that red and blue create purple, which is the base of related hues such as lavender, lilac, and mauve.

As mentioned, mauve is a tint of purple, which means that you need to add white to a mixture of red and blue. This will give you a lighter version of purple.

Just make sure to place the right amount of white to create a perfect mauve color. If you add too much white, you might get a lavender hue.

For those who are using digital means to create this color, you just need to create purple by mixing cyan and red, then add white.

Applying Mauve in Design

Once you have the color you prefer, you are ready to use it for your designs. To perfectly use this color, it is important to know how it became widely used.

This pale purple hue derived its name from the mallow flower, which is called mauve in French.

In the past, many flowers were referred to as blue, but they were actually this hue. This is because they had a greyish-blue shade as compared to other flowers within the same color family.

The first time this color was referred to as mauve was in the late 1700s.

In design, using this color implies youth, luxury, royalty, and femininity. This is because the mauve mallow flowers grew during spring.

As spring indicates the blossoming of flowers and plants, these colors also became associated with the youthful blossoming of humans.

Its association with spring is also the reason why it became related to femininity. This is because spring is when plants, flowers, and animals come alive and thrive; in the same way that women are associated with fertility and reproduction.

It is also a color of luxury and royalty due to its relation to purple, which was known as a rare, and therefore royal, color back in the day.

The Bottom Line

Now that you know how to mix colors in order to make mauve, you can use it to experiment. You can include it in your designs and artwork as is. You can also surround it with complementary colors to make it stand out.

With this lesson, we hope you learned a thing or two. Let us know your favorite use for mauve in a comment below!