To find the colors and exact hex codes that go with green, use our color combinations tool. It shows you monochromatic, analogous, triadic, and contrasting color palettes for a variety of greens. Try a scheme with mint green, spruce, jade green, or pistachio.
All About Green: Origin, Theory, Design Applications, and Color Schemes
Grace is a graphic designer and design writer based in Manchester in the UK. A self-confessed ‘print geek’ with an enthusiasm for all things related to print design and branding, Grace heads up creative agency Blue Whippet Studio and runs the design blog InDesignSkills.com.
Discover green’s enigmatic symbolism, as well as how to pair with other colors to create a contemporary scheme. Pick up pro tips on how to design and decorate using the color green in this complete guide.
The color of growth, regeneration, and cleanliness, green is intertwined with the natural world and healthy living. Often employed by designers to convey environmental ideas or promote health products, green is also associated with cleanliness, luck, and prosperity.
Although psychologically perceived as a lethargic color, green’s links with wellbeing and the environment continue to make it an extremely popular and naturally beautiful color to use in designs. From emerald to viridian, and olive to aqua, green comes in a huge range of jewel-like, leafy, or blue-infused shades. Each one also has their own distinct symbolism and associations.
Skip to the end of the article to discover three on-trend green color palettes to use in your designs. You can also discover a whole spectrum of incredible colors to use in your designs with our new color tool.
But first! How color savvy are you? Take this quiz and find out:
What Colors Make Green?
On the visible spectrum, green sits between blue and yellow. In painting and printing, green is a secondary color, meaning that it is created by mixing two primary colors—yellow and blue.
In the digital RGB color model, green is an additive primary color, alongside red and blue. These three colors are mixed together to create a full range of screen-friendly colors.
On a painter’s color wheel, green sits next to yellow on one side and blue on the other.
What Colors Make Green? Surprising Answers…
Searching for what colors make green? You’ve come to the right place to learn the standard, easy answer, a slightly more complex one — then a whole bunch of shocking other correct responses from our ever-growing color mixing chart!
As background, my name is Lillie, and I’m an artist and teacher who delights in hands-on experiments to solve questions like, “What colors make purple?” I adore going beyond the obvious answers in art to find the exciting ones that many people miss. Ready for our exploration around creating green? Let’s go…
What Two Colors Make Green?
The most classic answer to “What two colors make green?” is: Mixing the primary colors, yellow and blue (in the RYB color model), yields one of the three secondary colors, green. Yes, blue and yellow make green… but what other methods are there?
Well, believe it or not, one of the answers to, “Black and yellow make what color?” is… the color GREEN! Specifically, it’s an olive green, but yellow and black distinctively do work for our green quest when combined. Now let’s dive even deeper.
RYB vs. CMYK vs. RGB
Getting a bit more complex, in the world of the CMYK subtractive color model (used in printing), the primary colors are yellow, magenta (what red and purple make), and cyan: a bright aqua blue that’s slightly lighter and greener than azure color. In the world of CMYK, the two colors that make green are yellow plus cyan.
Ready to get crazier? In the RGB addictive color model used in screens and light, green is one of the primary colors (along with red and blue), so there’s nothing that makes it, since it’s just one of the foundational building blocks of the system — it just IS!
Surprising Other Methods
Heading back to the traditional RYB color (or colour, if you’re British) model that we’re used to from paints and markers, it’s time now to investigate several other ways to make shades of green besides yellow plus blue. I bet you’ll be as surprised as I was from the results of some of these hands-on experiments…
What Colors Make Green?
There are obvious answers to “What colors make green?” and not-so-obvious ones. Here is a range of options for creating shades of this wonderful secondary color.
Blue and Yellow
The classic way to make the secondary color, green, is to mix the primary colors, yellow and blue. You also can replace the blue with cyan (a bright aqua blue) for a fresher green.
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Yellow and Black
I was stunned to realize that black and yellow mix together to form green — an olive green, specifically. Check out my illustrations here if you don’t believe me.
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Orange and Blue
Many shades of orange will produce a dark green when mixed with blue! Why? Because orange is made of yellow and red, so the yellow mixes with the blue to make green, then the red (if it’s minimal enough) just darkens the shade.
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Brown and Yellow
I was very surprised to see that certain shades of brown produce a greenish hue when mixed with yellow. This is because brown is made of all three primary colors (red, yellow, and blue), so if there is enough blue in the mix, and the red amount is low enough, the result will be green when meshed with yellow!
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Green and Yellow
Now we’re moving on to how to make exciting versions of green by mixing it with other colors. In this case, we can make the light and electric bright green called chartreuse by mixing yellow and green together.
