What Colors Make Purple? How to Mix Purple for Coloring Pages

Key Takeaways

• Red and blue make purple, but only a red that leans toward blue will give you a vivid result. A warm, orange-leaning red like cadmium red mixed with blue produces brown, not purple.
• The reliable vivid mix is quinacridone magenta or alizarin crimson combined with ultramarine blue, because both of those pigments lean toward each other on the color wheel.
• Yellow sits directly opposite purple on the artists' color wheel, so any hidden yellow in your red is what turns a purple mix gray or muddy.
• Colored pencils build purple by layering rather than stirring, so lay blue down first and glaze red over it in three to five light passes.

Who this is for: Kids, parents, and adult colorists mixing purple for unicorns, flowers, galaxies, and fantasy scenes.

Purple is the mix that breaks the most hearts. You know red and blue make purple, you have both in front of you, and what lands on the paper is a dull grayish brown that looks nothing like a lavender field. The recipe is not wrong. The pigments are. Every red you own leans slightly orange or slightly pink, and that lean decides your purple before the two colors ever touch. This guide covers the base mix, the exact reason purple goes muddy, how to reach lilac and deep plum, and what changes when you work with colored pencils.

Red and Blue Make Purple

Red and blue make purple. Purple is a secondary color, which means it sits between two primaries on the red-yellow-blue wheel that artists and colorists use, and you reach it by combining the two primaries on either side of it.

Start close to equal parts and adjust. More red pulls you toward magenta and plum. More blue pulls you toward violet and indigo. Blue pigments are generally far stronger than reds, so add blue into red a little at a time rather than the reverse.

Worth knowing before you go further: purple and violet are not the same thing, even though people use the words interchangeably. Violet is a real spectral color that occupies roughly 380 to 450 nanometers at the end of the visible spectrum, which is why you can see it in a rainbow. Purple is not spectral. No single wavelength of light produces it. Your brain constructs purple whenever red and blue light reach your eye together, which is also how a screen makes it. In print the logic shifts again, and magenta and cyan ink overlap to produce blue violet.

Why Your Purple Turns Out Muddy

Here is the part most guides skip. No red is purely red and no blue is purely blue. Each one leans toward a neighbor on the color wheel, and that bias controls your result.

Cadmium red and vermilion lean toward orange, which means they carry yellow inside them. Yellow sits directly opposite purple on the twelve part color wheel, so it is purple's complement. Mix an orange-leaning red with blue and you are quietly mixing in yellow at the same time, and that yellow neutralizes the purple you are trying to build. The result is the brown gray that everyone recognizes and nobody wants.

Blues do the same thing in reverse. Ultramarine blue, pigment PB29, leans toward red and violet. Phthalo blue, pigment PB15, and cerulean blue, pigment PB35, both lean toward green, and green contains yellow. Pair a green-leaning blue with an orange-leaning red and you have loaded the mix with yellow from both sides.

So the rule is simple. For vivid purple, pick a red that leans blue and a blue that leans red. Quinacridone magenta, pigment PR122, or alizarin crimson, paired with ultramarine blue, is the combination that works. If you want a muted, dusty purple for shadows or weathered stone, reach for cadmium red and cerulean on purpose. Muddy is only a failure when you did not ask for it.

If mixing feels fussy, a ready-made tube of dioxazine purple, pigment PV23, gives you a strong dark purple straight out of the tube that you can lighten or warm from there.

How to Push Purple Lighter, Darker, and Duller

Once you have a purple you like, three adjustments cover almost everything a coloring page asks for.

To go lighter, add white if you are painting, or simply press more gently if you are using pencils or markers. On a printed page the white paper is your white paint. Lighter pressure lets more of it show through and lifts the color toward lavender without adding anything.

To go darker, resist the black. Black flattens purple and drains the life out of it, because it lowers the saturation along with the value. Reach for more ultramarine or a touch of Prussian blue instead. That deepens purple toward midnight and eggplant while the color stays rich.

To go duller, add a whisper of yellow. This is the same complement that ruins purple by accident, used deliberately and in tiny amounts. A trace of yellow ochre turns a loud purple into a believable dusty mauve, which is exactly what you want for distant mountains, shadows on white fur, and anything meant to sit in the background.

Making Purple With Colored Pencils and Markers

Colored pencils do not mix in a puddle. They mix optically on the page, one transparent layer over another, so the order of your layers changes the outcome.

Put the blue down first in a light, even pass, then glaze red over the top. Blue tends to overpower red, so leading with blue and controlling it with red keeps the balance in your hands. Build in three to five light layers rather than one heavy one. Light layers leave tooth on the paper for the next color to grab, while a single hard pass burnishes the surface and blocks anything you try to add after it. Wax based pencils like Prismacolor Premier blend into each other quickly, and oil based pencils like Faber-Castell Polychromos layer more times before the surface fills.

Markers work in the opposite order. Alcohol markers are wet, so lay your lighter purple first and add the darker one while the first is still damp, working from light to dark so the colors feather into each other instead of leaving a hard edge.

Good pages to practice all of this on: try the manes on our unicorn coloring pages, the petals on flower coloring pages where irises and lavender give you a range of purples in one scene, the scales on dragon coloring pages, or the nebulas in space coloring pages, where deep purple and blue sit right next to each other. Every page on ColoringDen is free, printable, and downloads as an instant PDF with no sign-up and no account.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do red and green make purple?

No. Red and green are complements on the artists' color wheel, so mixing them neutralizes both and gives you brown or a muddy gray. The confusion comes from light, where the rules are different. Red light and green light combine to make yellow, not purple. To get purple from light you need red and blue.

Do green and blue make purple?

No. Green and blue make teal, turquoise, and cyan, which all sit on the cool side of the wheel between the two. Green contains yellow, and yellow is purple's complement, so adding green to blue moves you further from purple with every stroke. You need red or magenta in the mix.

How do you make lilac?

Mix a vivid purple first, then add a large amount of white, roughly four parts white to one part purple, and warm it with the smallest touch of red. Lilac is a pale purple with a pink lean, while lavender is a pale purple with a blue lean. With colored pencils, skip the white and use very light pressure over untouched paper instead.

What color cancels out purple?

Yellow cancels out purple, because the two sit opposite each other on the twelve part color wheel. A small amount of yellow, or of a yellow-leaning neutral like yellow ochre, pulls purple toward gray without shifting its hue. Use a trace at a time, since too much will carry the mix all the way to brown.

Start Mixing

Purple rewards you the moment you stop thinking of red as one color. Pick a red that leans toward pink, pair it with ultramarine, and the muddy result you have been fighting simply stops happening. Then adjust in the three directions that matter: lighter with pressure, darker with blue, duller with a breath of yellow.

Now go use it. Browse the full collection at coloringden.com, where every coloring page is free and printable, downloads as an instant PDF, and never asks you to sign up or create an account.