Three primary colors form the base of the color wheel: red, blue and yellow. These three colors cannot be created by any combination of other colors. However, these three colors can be mixed in varying amounts to create every other color
By mixing the three primary colors, the color wheel adds the secondary layer of colors: green, orange and purple. Mix blue and yellow to get green. Combine red and yellow to get orange. Blue and red make purple.
The tertiary, or third, level of colors is created by mixing a primary and a secondary color. This adds six additional colors to the wheel: yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green and yellow-green.
Designers can use the color wheel to choose colors based on their analogous, or similar, qualities or else based on their complementary qualities. Analogous colors lie next to one another on the color wheel. Complementary colors are any two colors that are directly opposite each other on the wheel. For example, looking at the color wheel in the image above, blue and orange are complementary colors.
The 12 colors listed here describe the traditional color wheel. You may also see online versions of the wheel that include a graduated version of the colors in which millions of variations are available. But at the very basic level, even those colors wheels begin with the three primary colors.