Why Colour Theory Matters for Artists (And How It Creates Depth)

Colour theory for artists is one of the most powerful — and most overlooked — tools for creating compelling, three-dimensional paintings. As a Canadian artist and flower painter working in acrylics, I use colour to create depth and movement within my close-up floral paintings.

We're surrounded by colour every day, and it has a tremendous impact on our mood, our behaviour, the choices we make, and how we perceive the world around us. Once you understand how colour works, you can use it deliberately in your own paintings to guide the viewer's eye, strengthen your composition, and create a convincing sense of depth.

How Marketing Uses Colour Theory Every Day

Marketing firms have long used colour to influence how we respond to brands, products, and spaces. Warm colours such as orange, yellow, and red are common in food branding, where they can convey energy, warmth, excitement, and even hunger. Many fast-food restaurants have built highly recognizable brands around these colours.

Think McDonald's!

A fun example closer to home: supermarkets use colour theory in the meat department. Green is traditionally placed beside red meat because it can make the meat appear more red. This effect is known as simultaneous contrast — the way our perception of a colour shifts depending on the colours surrounding it.

Because colours cast their complement (the colour directly opposite on the colour wheel) on those colours beside it, placing green beside the meat will make it appear more red. Reverse the relationship, and if red were placed around the meat instead, it would cast green, and the meat would appear more grey — and unappetizing. It's a fascinating example of just how much the colours surrounding something can change what we think we see.

How Colour Theory Creates Depth in Painting

For artists, understanding colour theory unlocks something even more valuable: the ability to influence how a painting is perceived in three dimensions. One of the central goals of representational painting is to create a sense of depth, and the colours you choose for the foreground, middle ground, and background will directly shape how three-dimensional the painting appears.

Note: if you're a non-representational painter — working deliberately to reject a sense of depth — this theory still applies to you. You can use the same colour principles in reverse, choosing your palette to deliberately flatten the picture plane and support a more two-dimensional effect.

Three Colour Principles for Creating Depth

Whether you're working with a shallow depth of field (a close-up floral or still life) or a deep one (a landscape), these three colour theory principles can help when creating depth in painting:

• Intense colours come forward. Dull colours recede.
• Dark colours come forward. Light colours recede.
• Warm colours come forward. Cool colours recede.

These aren't rigid rules. Colour is always affected by the hues, values, and contrast around it. But keeping these principles in mind as you paint can encourage the viewer's eye to move into and around your composition — and that movement is often what separates a mediocre painting from a successful one.

Colour Theory in Close-Up Florals

As a contemporary artist whose large-scale paintings depict flowers cropped in close, my acrylic on canvas paintings don't have a traditional foreground or background — just petals, layered close together. So, I apply these same colour principles on a much smaller scale.

In this recent dahlia painting, the petals near the centre carry the warmest, most saturated golds and ambers, along with the painting's deepest shadows. As the petals move outward and away, the colour temperature cools — shifting into pale cream, then into soft blue-grey at the outside edges.

The effect is the same as it would be in a landscape: the warmer, more intense areas tend to pull forward, while cooler, lighter, and less intense areas tend to recede. In my paintings, it just happens within a single bloom instead of across a horizon.

Try It on One of Your Own Paintings

Here's a simple exercise: look at one of your paintings and squint slightly so that some of the detail disappears. Where does your eye go first?

Now consider why. Is that area warmer than the colours around it? More intense? Does it have the strongest value contrast? Do cooler, more muted colours lead your eye away from it and into the surrounding areas?

Squinting is a simple way to see whether your colour choices are supporting the depth and movement you intended. And if they aren't, you may discover that a surprisingly small shift in colour temperature, intensity, or value is enough to change how the entire painting reads.

Notice Colour Theory Everywhere

As you go about your day, it's worth noticing how colour theory is at work all around you, shaping how you respond to the things you see and how you perceive depth in the world.

Look for warm and cool colours, complementary relationships, shifts in colour intensity, and changes in value contrast. Notice which colours seem to jump forward, and which settle quietly into the distance. Then look for those same relationships in paintings you view — including your own.

The more you train your eye to see these relationships, the more deliberately you can use them in your work.

If you would like to see these colour principles in action, you can view my acrylic flower paintings, which rely on warm-cool colour relationships, value, and contrast to create depth and movement. You can also learn more about commissioning a custom painting created for your own space and palette.

Happy painting!

Laurie Koss is a Canadian contemporary flower artist based in Kelowna, BC, and a Senior Member of the Federation of Canadian Artists (SFCA). Her large-scale acrylic-on-canvas flower paintings have been featured on Canada Post stamps and a Royal Canadian Mint collector coin. She also shares her expertise on composition, light, and the elements of design on her YouTube channel, Art & Inspiration with Laurie.