What Colors Make Yellow? Why It Is Primary, and Shades

Short answer: in paint, crayons and printing ink, yellow is a primary color. It's one of the starting colors in both the red-yellow-blue and the cyan-magenta-yellow systems, so you can't mix it from other pigments. On a screen, though, red light + green light makes yellow. Once you have yellow, you can mix gold, mustard, lemon, butter and more.

Why you can't mix yellow paint

Primary colors are the ones everything else is built from. Yellow is a primary in both models people use for paint and print:

Red, yellow, blue (the classic art-class color wheel)
Cyan, magenta, yellow (the model printers use)

In both, no mix of other pigments makes a clean yellow. Mixing orange and green, for example, gives a dull yellow-brown, not a bright yellow. If you run out of yellow paint, you need to buy more.

Yellow in light

Screens work with light, not pigment, and their primaries are red, green and blue. When red and green light overlap at full strength, your eyes see yellow. That's why yellow on a screen often looks brighter than any yellow paint.

How to mix shades of yellow

You want	Mix
Lemon yellow	Yellow + a tiny touch of white (or a cool yellow from the tube)
Golden yellow	Yellow + a little orange or red
Gold	Yellow + a little orange + a touch of brown
Mustard yellow	Yellow + a little brown, or yellow + a tiny bit of black or purple
Butter yellow	Yellow + white
Pale yellow / cream	Lots of white + a little yellow
Ochre	Yellow + brown + a touch of red
Amber	Yellow + orange + a touch of brown
Yellow-green / chartreuse	Yellow + a small amount of blue or green

Darkening yellow carefully

Yellow is easily overpowered. Even a little black can make it look greenish (olive). For warm, dark yellows, add brown or a tiny amount of purple, yellow's complementary color. Add very small amounts and test as you go.

Yellow with crayons, markers and colored pencils

Colored pencils: yellow is light, so layer it first and put darker colors on top. For gold, layer yellow, then a light orange, then a touch of brown in the shadows.
Crayons: press firmly for bright yellow. For metallic-looking gold, color yellow and add a light orange layer at the edges.
Markers: color yellow areas first so darker markers don't drag into them.

See how to color with colored pencils for layering tips.

Yellow on the color wheel

Yellow's complementary color is purple. Mixed together they make a soft brown (one way to make brown). Yellow mixed with blue makes green, and with red makes orange. For the full picture, see our color mixing chart.

Try it

Yellow is perfect for suns, stars, sunflowers and crowns. Try it on our summer coloring pages or princess coloring pages, and use a little orange and brown to make crowns look like gold.