Others have a thicker pigment that doesn’t mix as well.
How to Make Purple
Learn how to make the color purple. Find out which two colors make purple paint and food coloring and how to make it dark and light.
Table of Contents
How to Easily Make Purple
The way to make purple is by mixing red and blue. Be sure to not use too much blue to start. Therefore, begin with a very small amount of blue and as more until you get the color you want.
To get some sort of purple color is easy, but getting the correct shade you want can be difficult. This makes getting the right tone for your project or craft more challenging.
Note: Some links in this post may contain affiliate links, which means at no cost to you, I may earn a commission.
What Two Colors Make Purple?
Blue and red make purple. I recommend you start with red and then gradually add blue to it.
It doesn’t matter what you’re using, whether paint (including fabric paint) or food coloring or something else, the process is the same.
Testing Our Reds We Want to Use to Make Purple
The first thing we need to do before we try to mix purple is to test our paints by mixing them all with white and seeing what we get.
When we do this we are ultimately trying to determine if our reds are warm or cool. For mixing purple, we want to avoid warm reds that contain a yellow bias. While we are going to use white paint for this example another way to determine if your paint has a color bias is to spread it in a thin glaze. Both methods are a way to determine what color your paint is leaning towards. So when we mix our colors with white we are looking to see if they turn a peach or a salmon color indicating that they have a slight bit of yellow pigment in them. For my red paints, I currently have all Liquitex Basics Acrylic Paints. From left to right I have Naphthol Crimson, Primary Red, and Cadmium Red Medium Hue.
As you can see, the Cadmium Red has turned a shade of salmon color leaning more towards orange. This is an indication of a yellow bias. Since yellow is the complementary color of purple, when they get mixed together they become brown. For me, this was my problem. Well one of them. We will see what happens when we mix our blues. This is the only warm red that I currently have. While not great for mixing purple this color would be the best option if I wanted to mix orange.
Orange is another color I have had trouble mixing probably because I didn’t know any of this about color bias. The other two reds you can see are different shades of pink. These are the reds we would want to use for mixing our purple. These are what we refer to as our “cool reds” that have a color bias towards blue. This is exactly what we want for purple! So when we go to mix our purple in the final step we will want to use our Naphathol Crimson and our Primary Red to get a good purple. Now lets test our blues!
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Testing Our Blues We Want to Use to Make Purple
Next up, lets test our blues with white too. We’re basically doing the same thing with our blues too.
We need to figure out which of our blues are “warm” and which are “cool”.
A warm blue is biased towards red while a cool blue is biased towards green. We want to find which of our blues are the warm blues with a red bias.
For me, the blues I currently have are Ultramarine Blue, Primary Blue, and Light Blue Permanant. Let’s take a look and see what happens when we mix them with white.
As we can see, by mixing just a bit of white with our Ultramarine Blue we get a slight hint of violet showing up. This is our warm blue with a red bias and the one we want to use to make our purple.
The Primary Blue and Light Blue Permanant paint both are our cool blues. While you don’t really see green tint in the way you do with the purple in our Ultramarine mixture, the fact that they don’t look purple tells us that they are our more green biased blues.
In fact, it looks like cool blues turn light blue or aqua while cool reds turn light red or pink. So neither really show clearly their color bias like the warm colors do.
While our green biased blues are not great for making purple they would be perfect for when you need to make a green mix.
Now that we have tested our blue colors with white we know we will need to use our Ultramarine Blue to get the color we want.
The Shades Of Purple We Can Make
Alright, now that we figured out that I have two reds of the right bias and one blue of the right bias lets see what sort of purple we get when we mix our blue with the two reds.
If our understanding of color bias and our analysis of our colors is correct then we should get some good purple mixes.
For this test we are using our warm blue, Ultramarine Blue, to see what happens when we mix it with our cool reds of Naphthol Crimson and Primary Red.
Here are the results I got. Our analysis was indeed correct. These are both great shades of purple!
While I wasn’t able to get a bright vibrant purple with these particular colors we have proven the concept and approach works!
Now that we have overcome this issue with purple and have learned a little bit about color bias, this is clearly something that we need to know a lot more about to mix all of our colors in the way that we want.
We definitely will be exploring color bias further to get a deeper grasp on this concept.
Did you follow along with me? How did your results turn out?
If you’re still having trouble here is a table of warm blues and cool reds that you can use as a reference guide when you go to buy your paints.
| Warm Blues | Cool Reds |
| Ultramarine Blue | Naphthol Crimson |
| Winsor Blue | Primary Red |
| Cobalt Blue | Permanent Rose |
| Indanthrene Blue | Carmine Red |
Now that I’m aware of this I will do my best to refine and update this table as I find more colors and test them myself.
The only colors on this list that I tested myself are the ones you saw featured in this article. The rest of the colors I found using a resource I found called The Science of Color found here.
If you’re interested in learning more about mixing colors and color theory they seem like they have some pretty great info.
If you stick around with me on this site though we will explore it all here in due time! Now go follow these steps to figure out which of your blues and reds will make purple!
Hey there! Thanks for reading my article! I’m Marc the creator of this website. I’m a growing artist and web creator seeking to share what I’m learning in the hopes that it helps someone out there like you. I hope you found this information useful. If you’re interested in learning more about me and my story click on my name or on my picture!
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As an abstract painter, I’m always looking for amazing artists to learn from and be inspired by. In today’s world, there are so many incredible artists out there to discover and learn from it was.
How to Make Purple Watercolor
Supplies Needed:
I normally love my Winsor & Newton kit for painting, but the watercolor palette didn’t work so well for mixing purples. The warm red is just a little too orange.
However, the Daniel Smith set is perfect for mixing colors. The hues are vibrant and beautiful! I love how this set mixes!
When in doubt, swatch it out.
Try the following different combinations to see what color you like:
- Cool red + cool blue
- Cool red + warm blue
- Warm red + warm blue
- Warm red + cool blue
To mix a vibrant purple, you get the best results from mixing a cool red and a warm blue. The cool red and cool blue also produce a pretty purple.
The other combinations contain more yellow, so the color becomes muddy. (Remember red + blue + yellow = brown.)
Depending on what you’re painting, you may prefer the brighter colors or the muddier versions, so it’s nice to know how to mix them all.
That darker shade of purple would be perfect for shadows because it’s almost black.
The top two rows of swatches are made by varying the amounts of red or blues in each mixture. As you can see, you can get a variety of colors.
The bottom row was made using special mixes of my new Jean Haines Master artist set from Daniel Smith. This set was a splurge, but it contains so many pretty colors that granulate. I’m not a fan of purple, but the imperial purple is absolutely gorgeous!
This set has taught me how much fun it is to mix purples with unlikely shades of dark greens to make inky violets and forest green mixtures.
So don’t just mix the normal colors. Try some weird ones to see what you can get. Who would have thought to mix green and purple? (Brown hues also make some stunning purples!)
Making Pastel Purples and Violets
Pastels are made by adding more water. Use a palette with deep wells when mixing pastels.
Adding white watercolor to the purple mixtures will also give you lighter, pastel versions (too much white can make the paint opaque, so keep this in mind.)
An opaque version may be perfect for what you are doing but is generally frowned upon by watercolor purists. But who cares if you’re having fun?
To make lavender, you can either just dilute ultramarine blue or add white. I love both versions.
To make a lilac color, add quinacridone rose (or another cool red) to ultramarine blue and dilute the color. It also looks pretty when you add white.
You can use the same mixture to make a mauve color. Just add a bit more of the quinacridone rose. If you prefer a more muted version, add a tiny drop of yellow into the mixture to tone it down.
How to Make Dark Purple
Making dark purple is easy!
Just add a bit of black to the purple mixture. I prefer mixing with Payne’s gray because it’s a bit softer and has a blue tone that works well with purple.
Another easy way to make a dark purple is to mix indigo with red. In this example, I used quinacridone rose.
Mixing Pre-Made Violets Into Other Colors
My favorite use for purple is for shadows. It’s possible to get really moody colors when you mix pre-made violets with other colors.
Mixing violet with burnt umber creates a warm plum color. Mixing violet with phthalo green creates a moody blue-violet color.
If you just want to tone down a bright violet, you can mix a bit of yellow. Since this is the complementary color for purple, it mutes the vibrancy.
My Favorite Ready-Made Purple Watercolors (Updated)
To be honest, purple is not my favorite color, so I don’t end up using it a lot. However, there are a few purples that I like.
- Holbein Lavender– I LOVE this color so much that I have it in gouache as well. It’s the perfect light purple, almost periwinkle.
- Winsor and Newton Cotman Mauve – This color skews a bit more magenta.
- Dr. Ph Martin’s Violet – This color is more of a classic purple. Dr. Ph Martins radiant watercolors are great for a vibrant punch of color.
My new favorites are moodier and all of them granulate.
- Rembrandt Dusk Pink -This moody dark purple is gorgeous.
- Daniel Smith Shadow Violet – I love using this color for skies. It has really pretty pink undertones.
- Daniel Smith Moonglow – This color is magical. At first glance, it looks like a cool dark purple, but when you look at it more closely, you can see bits of aqua shining through. (This color contains pigments that are not lightfast, so be careful.)
- Daniel Smith Rose of Ultramarine – I never thought I would like this kind of color, but there’s something about it. It granulates really nicely too.
