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Why does mixing red and yellow make orange?

When you mix red and yellow light or paint, your eyes and the paint show it as orange.

When you mix red and yellow paint in a paint box, tiny bits of the two colours mix together. Your eyes see this mix as one new colour, and we call it orange. Orange sits right between red and yellow.

When colours mix in paint, they soak up and bounce back light in different ways. Red paint mostly bounces back red light, and yellow paint bounces back yellow light. When you mix them, the light that reaches your eyes changes, and your brain reads it as orange.

Red and yellow are two of the three colours called 'primary colours' in paint. We can make new colours by mixing primary colours together. For example, red and blue make purple, and yellow and blue make green.

Quick facts

Red and yellow are two of the primary colours in paint.
When you mix two primary colours, you get a secondary colour.
Mixing red and yellow makes orange.
Mixing yellow and blue makes green.
Mixing red and blue makes purple.
In a rainbow, orange sits between red and yellow.

Check what you remember

3 questions — all of them come from the quick facts above. There is no score and no wrong turn.

1. What colour do you get when you mix red and yellow?

2. Which of these is a primary colour?

3. What colour do you get when you mix yellow and blue?

Where this comes from

1 tr.wikipedia.org 80/100
Orange - Wikipedia
An encyclopedia page that explains how the colour orange is made.
2 tr.wikipedia.org 80/100
Primary colour - Wikipedia
Explains the primary colours red, yellow and blue.
3 tr.wikipedia.org 75/100
Colour - Wikipedia
Gives a general explanation of how colours and light work.

🎨

Primary Colours

Red, yellow and blue are primary colours. We can't make these three colours by mixing other colours, but we can make every other colour from them.

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Secondary Colours

When you mix two primary colours, you get a secondary colour. Orange, purple and green are all secondary colours.

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Light and Colour

Our eyes see colours by looking at the light that bounces off things. Paint soaks up some light and bounces back other light, and we see the light that bounces back.

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Rainbows

In a rainbow, red and yellow sit next to each other, with orange in between. This shows how colours line up in order.

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