The Two-Primary Rule

The Two-Primary Rule can be broken down into to parts:

1. Colors that fall between the same two primary colors on the color wheel will blend into equally bright (saturated) colors.
2. Colors that fall into different two-primary segments will blend into duller colors.

Put another way:

IF your draft blends warp and weft colors, AND IF you want your cloth color to stay bright, choose your warp and weft colors from the same two-primary segment shown in the wheel below. They will blend into a color that’s just as bright as the original colors were.

That is if you mix yellow and red, or purple and blue, or cyan and green, you’ll get an equally bright color.

If you mix colors from DIFFERENT segments, you’ll get a duller color. The further apart the colors are on the color wheel, the duller the mixed color will become.

Examples

Green and red are in different segments, and quite far apart on the color wheel, so when you mix them together in plain weave, you get a very dull color:

Cyan and magenta, on the other hand, are in the same segment of the color wheel, so when woven together in plain weave, the colors remain bright.

The Two Primary Rule is important to remember, and it is particularly critical when working with solid colored warp and weft. That’s because if your warp is solid green and your weft is solid red, choosing the wrong draft could easily result in fabric that’s dull all over.

The Two Primary Rule is NOT a “must use”

There is, of course, absolutely no law saying that your colors must be eye-poppingly bright. In fact, toning down your colors might produce a piece you like a lot more than one that’s full of super-bright colors.

So the Two-Primary Rule isn’t an absolute law! It simply says that if you want bright colors, sticking within the same segment of the color wheel will produce brighter colors. It’s perfectly okay to decide that you don’t want those brighter colors.

All these rules only apply if your colors are mixing

Not all drafts mix colors together. If your draft doesn’t mix warp and weft colors much, then you can ignore the Two-Primary Rule and still have your colors remain vivid.

You can share your thoughts, and your successful (or not so successful) designs using this “rule” over in this forum thread!

Happy weaving,