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Lecture Notes 8 - Hiran Wijesekara Design Academy

Neon colors are extremely bright versions of primary and secondary colors like blue, red, green, yellow, and purple. They emit light and appear fluorescent. Traditional color wheels predate neon colors, which were later created using chemical methods and are difficult to achieve with standard print design due to "muddying" colors. On digital color wheels, ultra-bright neon hues are scattered relating to their primary or secondary colors. There are fluorescent versions of almost every color such as neon green, red, blue, pink, and purple. Neon colors follow the same complementary color rules as regular hues.

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82 views

Lecture Notes 8 - Hiran Wijesekara Design Academy

Neon colors are extremely bright versions of primary and secondary colors like blue, red, green, yellow, and purple. They emit light and appear fluorescent. Traditional color wheels predate neon colors, which were later created using chemical methods and are difficult to achieve with standard print design due to "muddying" colors. On digital color wheels, ultra-bright neon hues are scattered relating to their primary or secondary colors. There are fluorescent versions of almost every color such as neon green, red, blue, pink, and purple. Neon colors follow the same complementary color rules as regular hues.

Uploaded by

draping pattern sloper
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Lecture Notes

Neon colors
1

Neon Colors

Where do Neon Colors Sit on a Color Wheel?


Fluorescent or neon colors are extremely bright versions of primary and secondary colors, such
as blue, red, green, yellow and purple.
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Fluorescent colors stand apart from other types of color due to the fact that they emit light,
making them luminescent. When the emitted light falls in the visible spectrum of light that can
be seen by the human eye, the luminescence is rendered in color.

The Origins, History, and Design Power of Neon Colors — Luminescent


Image by contributor Mickael Guyot.
Traditional painters’ color wheels that predate the 20th Century don’t feature neon colors due
to the fact that these super-bright pigments were later created using chemical methods. Even
now, because neon colors have to emit light to appear fluorescent, they are difficult to achieve
using standard print design methods.
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For example, because CMYK is an additive color model, the layering of colored inks “muddies”
the final color result. This makes fluorescence near-impossible to achieve. To create neon colors
in print, designers will often turn instead to specialist pigments such as Pantone spot colors.

On digital color wheels neon hues are more prevalent, because their composition is better suited
to a light-emitting RGB color model. Here, ultra-bright hues are scattered throughout, as relations
of their primary or secondary color relations.

Neon Colors — Color Wheel


4

Types of Neon Colors


The gas element neon actually only produces a red-orange color, but the word neon can
broadly apply to a wide range of fluorescent and ultra-bright colors.

There is a fluorescent or ultra-bright version of almost every primary and secondary color,
including:

Green—Neon (or “UFO”) Green, Electric Lime


Red—Bright Red, Electric Orange
Blue—Electric Blue, Electric Cyan
Pink— Neon (or “Plastic”) Pink, Neon Magenta
Purple—Bright (or “Proton”) Purple
Yellow—Neon YellowComplementary Colors for Neon Hues
Ultra-bright versions of primary and secondary colors follow the same complementary rules as
their more subdued relations. So, neon green pairs well with neon magenta, because green is
complementary to magenta. Electric blue pairs beautifully with electric orange, and neon yellow makes
an unexpectedly.
5

Complementary Colors for Neon Hues


Ultra-bright versions of primary and secondary colors follow the same complementary
rules as their more subdued relations. So, neon green pairs well with neon magenta, because
green is complementary to magenta. Electric blue pairs beautifully with electric orange, and neon
yellow makes an unexpectedly good teammate for bright purple.
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