Color harmonies from Johannes Itten's teachings
Click any segment on the wheel to select a hue
Johannes Itten (1888–1967) was a Swiss painter and teacher at the Bauhaus school. His book The Art of Color remains one of the most influential works on color theory, emphasizing the subjective experience of color alongside objective principles.
Itten's 12-hue color wheel is built on three primaries (red, yellow, blue), three secondaries (orange, green, violet), and six tertiaries. Complementary colors sit directly opposite each other on this wheel — when placed side by side, they intensify each other to maximum brilliance. This is what Itten called the "contrast of complements."
Beyond simple complements, Itten described seven contrasts: hue, light-dark, cold-warm, complementary, simultaneous, saturation, and extension. This tool explores the harmonic relationships that emerge from his wheel.
"Color is life; for a world without colors appears to us as dead. Colors are primordial ideas, the children of light." — Johannes Itten, The Art of Color
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Paste a screenshot and MyKolor finds its main colours — or pick them yourself with the crosshair.
Sliders shift the whole palette together, so the relationships between the colours stay intact.