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Juxtaposition
For interior designers juxtaposition means that if you juxtapose two contrasting objects, images, or ideas, you place them together or describe them together, the differences between them are emphasized. The technique is used most often to juxtapose things for dramatic effect.
In respect to juxtaposition with color, when two colors are placed side by side they interact with one another and change our perception accordingly. The effect of this interaction is called simultaneous contrast. Our interpretation of a color can be changed when certain colors are juxtaposed and because we rarely see colors in isolation, simultaneous contrast affects our sense of the color that we see.
Simultaneous contrast is most intense when the two colors are complementary colors found from using the color wheel. These complementary colors are pairs of colors, which are found opposing each other on the color wheel. This effect of juxtaposing contrasting colors creates movement and vitality and is a useful tool if we want to liven up an interior space. If one color is existing, you can add it’s complementary to lift the intensity of both colors and add life and movement to the space.
A bright color will make the color that lies next to it appear more like its complementary color.
In a room situation, small highlighting colors can be made more intense when surrounded by another color, likewise they can be made more subdued depending on the scheme being used.
The diagrams show numerous examples using colors from the color wheel, primary, secondary and tertiary combinations.
Have a look for yourself and see how they change depending on what color they are positioned next to.
Color Juxtaposition Examples
Picture – Primary and Secondary background colors juxtaposed with a gray feature. The colors seem true without altering their appearance.
Picture – Primary background color juxtaposed with Secondary color feature.
Picture – Secondary Background color juxtaposed with a Primary color feature.
Picture – Primary and Secondary background color juxtaposed with Tertiary color feature.
Photo Examples
The use of two primary colors, red and yellow together intensifies each color.
With the use of a primary, yellow, and a secondary color, green the intensity of the secondary color increases.
Another primary color, yellow and a secondary color violet juxtaposition intensifies the secondary color.
Start observing color combinations around you. See if you can move things together or apart and see if it changes their color appearance. Play around and you will find that juxtaposition is a useful tool for an interior designer to use.
If you have enjoyed learning about juxtaposition and want to learn more about Color for Interiors why not register for your free Color Course? This will guide you through the topics we cover in color for interiors. The great advantage is, it is emailed to you and you then use this website as your learning resource. We have been providing courses online for over 16 years now. Join many of the other happy readers who have changed the way they now look at interior design. Please take a moment and enroll in our free color course.
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The black feathers of the promiscuous bird-of-paradise offers scientific proof why black is the sexiest color
Black, a sexy, slimming color favored by mate-hunting humans, turns out to also be a color of courtship among birds.
In a new study published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers report that the success of the mating dance of male birds-of-paradise (not to be confused with the flower) is not due to their hypnotic jiggle but to their black, light-absorbing plumage. The study looked at six species of of birds-of-paradise, native to Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and Australia. By spreading their wings during courtship, the small birds create a black feather-barrier that absorbs up to 99.95% of light. This somehow makes all the colors around them appear more brilliant and this vibrant aura scores them mates, according to the researchers.
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“The juxtaposition of darkest black and colors create to bird and human eyes what is essentially an evolved optical illusion,” explains Harvard University evolutionary biologist Dakota McCoy who co-authored the study with researchers from Yale University and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
“This study shows us that black makes us glow,” says McCoy. So, men, next time you’re waffling on what to wear on a date, go with black—it makes everyone look good.
Researchers say the discovery has implications that go beyond romantic dalliances among these members of the paradisaeidae family of birds. ”There’s lots of reasons we humans want to absorb light effectively—some aesthetic, some material,” says McCoy.
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“Hopefully, engineers can use what the bird of paradise teaches us to improve our own human technologies as well,” says Yale University professor Rick Prum, the study’s senior author. For example the the edge of the birds’ feathers are frayed to catch trap more light; these light-absorbent qualities could be used by engineers to develop more efficient solar panels.
NASA has spent a over a decade perfecting a super-black nanotechnology that will make their instruments more sensitive. McCoy notes that that birds-of-paradise feathers are easier to study than the nano-scale material most super-black researchers are dealing with.
As for the aesthetic side of things: Currently, artist Anish Kapoor asserts exclusive rights to “the blackest black shade ” that he’s invented. Perhaps the birds of paradise feathers could give other artists an alternative with which to challenge that claim.
