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PrintComplementary Colours
The common colour wheels that you buy from the art supply shop arrange complementary colours on the opposite sides of the wheel. When you mix opposites you expect to get a neutral grey and perhaps more usefully you can use one to reduce the intensity of the other. It's generally assumed that the same complementary colours also provide the best visual contrast to each other and this is the basis of the complementary colour schemes.
A contrary view is that the human eye responds better to colour pairs that are based on a slightly different colour wheel. The primary colours on the common colour wheel are red, blue, and yellow and a mixture of ideal pigments of these would produce black. The primary colours used by your tv screen are red, green, and blue (RGB) - the primary colours of addition. When used together you get white and when you have none of each you get black.
A wheel based on these RGB primary colours moves the colours around the wheel a little compared to the traditional colour wheel. For instance cadmium yellow is opposite ultramarine blue. A mixture of these two certainly won't produce a grey. (They apparently can give an illusion of grey when used unmixed in a Pointillist painting). However when placed in contrast together they are considered by some to be visually more stimulating than the mixing complements of blue and orange.
Exact visual complements will vary a bit with paint manufacturers' versions of a pigment. Typical pairs include:-
Cadmium red - phalo turquoise
Winsor violet - yellow green
Permanent rose - pthalo green blue shade
If you want to try these painting a square with one colour surrounding a smaller square of the other works well.
Visual complements allow a new interpretation of common mixed complementary wheel colour schemes such as ‘split complementary'. The latter in many cases becomes a true complementary scheme with an additional accent colour. Perhaps this explains why it is effective.
To find a much more complete visual complements list the books "Color right from the start" or "Watercolor right from the start" by Hilary Page cover the topic well. Her website gives an adequate outline at:
A seriously thorough investigation into all things watercolour can be found at:
Handprint also have a high quality visual complements colour wheel available here
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