I’ve got a theory, about colors.

Now, Color Theory is absolutely a thing. It’s a legitimate study of colors and how they relate to each other, and how certain factors can impact their perception and presentation, including how they can influence moods and feelings. I love to start off by diving into studies of Color Theory with my students in Art classes, from kindergarten up to sixth grade. It’s the foundation on which I build all of their other learning over the course of the school year. Studying Color Theory in an advanced or collegiate way can get pretty complex, and can be quite a rabbit hole to fall down on the internet if one is so inclined. Fascinating, really! But complex. There’s a lot of cognitive science that interlopes with it.

But, aside from official Color Theory, I have my own little theory, about colors. I don’t know if I’ve stumbled upon a part of official Color Theory that I simply hadn’t learned yet, or if this is completely inside my head (which I suspect may be the case). Even so, I think it’s compelling.

The arch was an architectural design perfected by the Ancient Romans (though they did not invent it; there’s evidence of arches as early as 2nd millennium BCE in use by Mesopotamia). Part of the way the arch works structurally is that it has something called a keystone, a piece found at the apex of the arch that keeps all the other stones soundly in place and enables the arch to bear its own weight. Remove the keystone, and the arch can’t do that anymore, and all the stones fall down.

I have a theory that the same thing can happen with colors.

Take a group of four or five colors. Any colors. Now, take one of the colors out of the mix. The combination you are left with should still look fine, EXCEPT for the removal of one particular color. If the remaining balance of colors looks off or unpalatable after removing a specific color, that color is your keystone color in the group.

Skeptical? I have examples. (I’d love to be able to show my examples with pictorial support, but I’m not really sure how to do that in this blog and its format, so feel free to grab some props like crayons or paint swatches to help you out!)

On a road I often drive in my area, there’s a realtor’s office that has a bunch of balloons tied on a rod at the end of their driveway. For quite some time, the five balloons were each red, orange, green, purple, and gold respectively. At some point, the green balloon was no longer there, presumably popped or blown away. So then there were four — red, orange, purple, and gold. This combination still looked good (to me, at least!); green was not the keystone color here. It got me thinking about what combination of four would turn out to be less appealing. Taking out gold and leaving the remaining four was just fine. Gold, green, red, and orange still seemed acceptable; gold, green, purple, and red also looked okay in my mind’s eye, though less satisfying than the others. In the end, taking out red and being left with green, orange, purple, and gold felt most off-putting. Red is the keystone color here that anchored the rest of the group. (They eventually replaced the missing green balloon with a banana yellow one which I don’t personally like as much, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Another example I can offer is about the colors from my wedding. The color of my bridesmaids’ dresses and the groomsmen’s ties was a bright blue. The bouquets were simple arrangements of peach roses and ivory/white baby’s breath, with accents of light purple lavender, and my bouquet also included white hydrangeas. My dress was a champagne/ivory color. So, as far as colors go, you have blue, peach, ivory, and lavender. Take out lavender, or peach, or ivory, and it all still works. Take out the blue, and the peach/lavender/ivory combination that remains is too soft, it’s incomplete. Here, blue is the keystone color.

I feel like I should offer a disclaimer one more time that this is just a theory, and like as not, it’s just a reflection of the way I see color. In no way do I assume that anyone needs to agree with my perceptions here. That being said, if you do find that you have similar perspective to this, if you test my theory with other colors and find some truth to it, or even if you happen to know of any academic merit to what I’ve laid out here, please let me know!

Colors are so fun and fascinating.