What Colors Make Orange? Paint, RGB and CMYK Recipes

Red and yellow make orange when mixing traditional paint pigments. Equal amounts provide a basic starting point, while increasing red creates a deeper red-orange and increasing yellow creates a lighter yellow-orange. Cleaner, stronger results depend on choosing pigments that do not introduce too much of a third primary into the mixture.

Mixing orange with paint

Paint uses subtractive pigment mixing, meaning each pigment absorbs some wavelengths of light.

Start with roughly equal amounts of red and yellow. Adjust from there rather than trying to achieve the final color immediately.

More yellow produces a warmer, lighter yellow-orange. More red produces a deeper red-orange.

For a clean orange, choose a red that does not lean toward blue. A blue-biased red introduces all three primaries into the mixture, which reduces saturation and makes the orange look muddy.

A warm red (such as cadmium red light) and a strong yellow are the best starting choices.

Orange in RGB light

RGB screen color works differently because it mixes light additively.

Red plus green light creates yellow, not orange. To produce orange on a screen, red stays high while green is added at a lower level.

For example, rgb(255, 165, 0) produces the familiar CSS orange, #FFA500.

Changing the green channel moves the result between deeper red-orange and brighter yellow-orange.

Orange in CMYK printing

CMYK process printing uses subtractive inks.

Magenta plus yellow produces red when both are strong. To create orange, keep yellow strong while reducing the amount of magenta.

A reference orange is about C0 M50 Y100 K0.

Increasing magenta pushes the color toward red-orange. Reducing magenta makes it more yellow.

Final values depend on the target ICC profile and printing conditions. Bright oranges are among the colors that shift most between screen and print, as explained in RGB vs CMYK.

Orange HEX examples

• Light orange #FED7AA
• Medium orange #F97316
• Dark orange #C2410C
• Muted orange #B7794B

These examples vary in both lightness and saturation while remaining within the orange family.

How to adjust orange

Add white to produce peach, apricot, or other pale orange tints. Add a small amount of black to create deeper burnt oranges.

To mute orange, add a tiny amount of its complement, blue. Too much blue quickly turns the mixture brown or gray, so introduce it gradually.

Experiment with these relationships using the color mixer, which includes paint, RGB, CMYK, and OKLCH modes. Use color name lookup to identify a name close to the finished color.

FAQ

What two colors make orange?

Red and yellow make orange in traditional paint mixing. Changing their proportions creates colors ranging from yellow-orange to red-orange.

How do you make burnt orange?

Start with orange and darken or mute it gradually. A small amount of black or complementary blue creates a deeper, less saturated burnt orange.

How do you make light orange?

Add white to an orange mixture. More white produces progressively lighter colors such as peach and pale orange.