What Are Tertiary Colors? Two Definitions and How to Mix Them

Key Takeaways

• Tertiary colors have two competing definitions and both are still in use: the common one names six colors mixed from a primary plus the secondary beside it, and the older one names three colors mixed from two secondaries.
• The six modern tertiary colors are red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet and red-violet, and many art teachers call this exact set the intermediate colors instead.
• Moses Harris published the older definition in 1766 in The Natural System of Colours, where his compound wheel named exactly three tertiaries: olive, slate and brown.
• The hyphenated name tells you the mixing ratio, so in red-orange the red dominates and you lay red first, because the first pencil layer fills the paper tooth and later layers only tint what is already there.

Who this is for: Colorists, art students and teachers who want a straight answer on tertiary colors and how to mix them with pencils instead of on a screen.

Look up tertiary colors and you get two answers, both stated with total confidence. One says there are six, with hyphenated names like blue-green. The next says three, and calls them olive, slate and brown. Neither is lying and neither is out of date. They answer different questions that share one word. Below you get both definitions, the history behind them, the recipe for all nine colors, and the layer order that decides whether a tertiary looks right on paper.

The Six Tertiary Colors on a Standard Color Wheel

A standard artists' color wheel holds twelve hues: three primaries, three secondaries, and six tertiaries in the gaps. Red, yellow and blue are the primaries, and mixing neighbouring pairs gives the secondaries orange, green and violet. Mixing a primary with the secondary beside it gives a tertiary, and since there are six such gaps, you get six.

Those six are red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet and red-violet. The names are not decoration. Each lists its two parents and names the dominant one first, which is the most useful fact on the wheel once you pick up a pencil. Red-orange leans red, yellow-orange leans yellow, and both come from the same two colors.

Here is what most charts leave out. Many art teachers call this same set the intermediate colors and reserve tertiary for something else. If you learned six hyphenated tertiaries and a friend learned three earth tones, you were both taught correctly in different vocabularies.

The Older Definition: Three Tertiaries From Two Secondaries

Under the older reading, a tertiary is what you get by mixing two secondary colors. There are only three ways to pair three secondaries, so this definition yields exactly three:

• Orange plus green gives a yellowish earth tone, called olive or citron.
• Green plus violet gives a cool grey-blue, called slate.
• Violet plus orange gives a reddish brown, called brown or russet.

This is not a folk theory. Moses Harris set it out in 1766 in The Natural System of Colours, built on the three primitives red, blue and yellow. He drew two wheels: a prismatic wheel for the pure hues, and a compound wheel for mixes of the compounds, naming three tertiaries as olive, slate and brown. He claimed 660 distinct teints from only thirty three terms, which marks it as a working tool for artists and dyers rather than a classroom diagram.

Both definitions follow the same logic, which is why neither died. Tertiary means third rank. Harris counted generations: primaries first, mixes of two primaries second, mixes of two secondaries third. The modern six count steps around the wheel instead.

Notice what the older three share. Mix any two secondaries and all three primaries land in the pot, which is the definition of a neutral, so olive, slate and russet come out soft and slightly grey. The modern six stay fully saturated, and that difference decides which set earns your time.

How to Mix a Tertiary Color With Colored Pencils

No twelve-pencil set includes a red-orange, so a tertiary is a two-pencil job and your order changes the result. The first layer sinks into the raised fibres of the paper, called the tooth. Once wax fills that tooth the second pencil has less texture to grab, deposits less pigment, and reads as a tint rather than an equal partner. The first color wins.

That gives you a rule you can read off the name. For red-orange, lay red first and bring orange over it. For yellow-orange, start with yellow. The name ranks the parents, so work in the order written and the ratio handles itself. Reverse it and one pair of pencils gives you both siblings.

Pressure matters more than pencil choice, and the paper is why. Standard printer paper is 20 lb while cardstock runs 65 lb to 110 lb, so a home-printed page has far less tooth than the pads most color theory tutorials assume. Three to five light passes hold more pigment than one heavy pass, because each light pass leaves tooth for the next while a hard pass flattens the fibres and nothing further takes. Prismacolor Premier uses a wax binder and Faber-Castell Polychromos an oil binder, and the softer wax core lays down more pigment per pass on thin paper.

For the older tertiaries, mix the two secondaries at equal pressure, then adjust: extra orange warms an olive toward moss, extra violet cools a slate toward storm grey. Our guide to blending colored pencils covers the stroke work.

Which Tertiary Colors Earn Their Place on a Coloring Page

Color theory sites answer palette questions with hex codes, which are an instruction to a screen. A wax pencil cannot execute a hex code. It can execute a recipe, so the useful question is not what a tertiary looks like but which two pencils, in which order, make it.

Judged that way, Harris's three beat the modern six on a printable. Bark, stone, soil, dry grass, mushroom caps and fur all live in the olive, slate and russet range, which is exactly what two secondaries hand you. The saturated six have narrower jobs: red-violet and blue-violet carry petals and wings, yellow-green new growth, blue-green water.

So match the set to the subject. Reach for olive and slate on forest pages and russet on mushroom pages, where a saturated orange looks like plastic. Save the hyphenated six for flower pages and butterflies, where saturation is the point. To drill layer order without wasting a detailed sheet, use large open shapes, which is what our easy mandalas are for. Every page linked here downloads free as a printable PDF with no sign-up and no account, so testing a mix costs one sheet of paper.

One more pairing: a tertiary sits opposite its complement, so red-orange faces blue-green. Place those two side by side and both look stronger. Place neighbours together instead and you get the quiet look of our fall pages.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is brown a tertiary color?

Yes under the older definition, where Harris listed brown by name in 1766 as one of three tertiaries. Under the modern six-color definition brown is not tertiary at all, because it is not a primary mixed with a neighbouring secondary. Either way you mix it the same practical way, roughly three parts warm color to one part blue. See what colors make brown for the full recipe.

What is a quaternary color?

A quaternary color results from mixing two tertiary colors, putting it one generation further from the primaries. The term is genuinely rare and no agreed list of quaternary names exists, so treat any chart that confidently names six of them as that author's invention rather than standard theory. In pencil, a quaternary is just a three or four layer grey-brown.

Is there a fourth primary color?

No, not in the red, yellow and blue system every tertiary color chart is built on, because having three primaries is what defines that system. Other systems use different primaries entirely: printing inks use cyan, magenta and yellow, and screens emit red, green and blue light. A four-primary set is a different model, not a fourth color bolted onto this one.

What are the 7 complementary colors?

There is no set of seven complementary colors, because complements come in pairs rather than lists. A twelve-hue wheel has six pairs, and three of those pairs are tertiaries: red-orange against blue-green, yellow-orange against blue-violet, and yellow-green against red-violet. The number seven most likely comes from confusing complements with the seven colors of the spectrum.

Start Mixing

Tertiary colors are simpler than the contradictory charts suggest. Six come from a primary plus its neighbouring secondary, with hyphenated names that tell you which parent leads. Three come from two secondaries and give the muted olive, slate and russet that natural subjects need. Lay the dominant color first, build three to five light layers, and let the paper do the rest.

The fastest way to learn a tertiary is to mix it twice in opposite orders and compare. Browse coloringden.com and print something with room to experiment. Every page is free and printable, downloads instantly as a PDF, and needs no sign-up.