Color Harmony

Color Harmony is the concept that some pairs of colors look better together than others. While the notion "look good together" is subjective, practice demonstrates that there is wide agreement about different patterns that work most often.

Harmony Patterns
The disciplines of color theory and graphic design have developed a number of patterns of harmony that can help cartographers in selecting sets of colors that harmonize:


 * Complementary Colors are colors that are on opposite sides of the color wheel, i.e. blue and orange, yellow and purple, red and green. These colors naturally contrast with each other as to complement, or bring out the best of, each other. When used together, complementary colors are visually appealing and attract the eye . Complementary colors are frequently used together in cartographic design to effectively display certain phenomena.
 * Analogous Colors are colors that are found right next to each other on the color wheel, such as yellow-orange, orange, and red-orange . Analogous colors in cartography are useful for showing contrast between data values or layers while maintaining the same color theme. For instance, if mapping population density, analogous colors could be used in a population density data choropleth map with red-orange representing high-density enumeration units and yellow-orange representing low-density enumeration units. The orange color scheme can be maintained while demonstrating geographic phenomena in an aesthetically pleasing way.
 * Triadic Colors are colors that are equally spaced apart on the color wheel. This is a type of split-complementary color scheme, but unlike the split-complementary scheme, triadic colors are evenly spaced around the color wheel. This means that, on the traditional color wheel, there are only four possible triadic color schemes (of all twelve colors, every fourth color is selected). However, triadic colors can be used in varying degrees of saturation, opening up the possibilities for use in GIS and cartography. Generally, triadic color schemes are most effective when one color is dominant and the other two are used as accent colors. On a map, this allows the reader to focus on the most important details, with the other details presented in less emphatic, yet still visually pleasing colors. For example, on a reference map, the main details can be presented in the dominant color, and other supporting details or backgrounds can be represented in the accent colors.
 * Split-Complementary Colors is a color scheme similar to that of complementary colors. One base color is chosen (ex. Blue) and then both neighboring colors of the base color's complementary color are used (yellow-orange and red-orange in this example). This scheme provides great contrast while remaining less intense than complementary colors.
 * Tetradic Colors are a combination of four colors created by combining two sets of complementary colors. For example, red, green, yellow, and purple. When you connect these colors together on the color wheel, it will form the shape of a rectangle.