What’s on the Warm & Cool poster
A definition and 6 facts worth remembering.
Colours are called warm or cool relative to their neighbours. Every hue family contains a warmer version and a cooler version of itself.
- Warm colours tend to advance; cool ones recede.
- Cadmium red is warm; alizarin crimson is cool.
- Ultramarine is warm for a blue; phthalo is cool.
- Distance cools and greys a colour: aerial perspective.
- A warm light casts a cool shadow, and the reverse.
- Temperature is a comparison, never an absolute.
- Advances — warm
- Recedes — cool
- A cool grey beside a warm grey reads as blue, though neither is blue on its own.
A split-primary palette carries a warm and a cool of each primary, so any mix can be kept clean rather than muddied.
Questions about the Warm & Cool poster
- What’s on the Warm & Cool poster?
- A definition and 6 facts worth remembering. Colours are called warm or cool relative to their neighbours. Every hue family contains a warmer version and a cooler version of itself. Warm colours tend to advance; cool ones recede.; Cadmium red is warm; alizarin crimson is cool.; Ultramarine is warm for a blue; phthalo is cool.; Distance cools and greys a colour: aerial perspective.; A warm light casts a cool shadow, and the reverse.; Temperature is a comparison, never an absolute.; Advances — warm; Recedes — cool; A cool grey beside a warm grey reads as blue, though neither is blue on its own.. A split-primary palette carries a warm and a cool of each primary, so any mix can be kept clean rather than muddied.
- Who is the Warm & Cool poster for?
- Warm & Cool belongs to the Art & Design section rather than to a school year, because design is not something one grade owns. Anyone learning colour & composition can pin it up — a beginner, a student mid-course, or someone revising years later.
- When should you use the Warm & Cool poster?
- Use it when planning which colours should advance and which should recede. A wall chart earns its place by being glanceable from where the work is happening, so Warm & Cool belongs on the wall where that design work actually happens, within glancing distance, rather than filed away.
- What other posters go with Warm & Cool?
- Colour Contrast, Additive & Subtractive and Scale & Proportion sit alongside Warm & Cool in the Art & Design section. Printed together they make a wall rather than a single sheet, which is how a reference set actually gets used.Colour ContrastAdditive & SubtractiveScale & Proportion
- Is the Warm & Cool poster free to download and print?
- Yes. Warm & Cool downloads as a free PDF with no account, no email and no watermark, like everything else in the Art & Design section. Print as many copies as you like for a home, a classroom, a library or a tutoring group; reselling the file is the only thing the licence rules out.Read the licence
- What size does the Warm & Cool poster print at?
- Warm & Cool is a vector PDF laid out for US Letter, and prints on A4 with Fit to page — the same file, no separate download. Because every mark on it is drawn rather than photographed, it stays sharp enlarged to A3, A2 or A1 at a copy shop. Colour carries emphasis only, so a greyscale print of Warm & Cool loses nothing.Printing guide
Related posters
Charts that sit alongside Warm & Cool on the same wall.
Browse every Art & Design poster, or start from the full catalogue.