What color does Orange & Pink make?
Absolutely Beautiful!

Introduction

Orange and pink are two warm colors that can brighten up anyone’s day. We love using both these colors in our art projects as they breathe life into artworks. They are joyful and a delight to watch, even in terms of design. But what happens when they are mixed together? Well, they create a beautiful color that feels as joyful as these two are!

Orange and pink are mixed to create a hue of peach. The resulting peach hue could be made more orange or pink by using the quantity of both these colors as desired.

1. Understanding the Color Wheel and Color Theory

Although peach doesn't exist on the color wheel by itself, orange does!

Peach is a warm color that always has a soft feeling. 

Warm Colors

One half of the color wheel has cool colors, whereas the other half comprises of warm colors. When warm colors combine and mix, they produce another warm color. However, you could always create tones, tints and shades. Tints are created by adding white to a color, tones are created by adding grey, and shades are created by adding black.

Type of Colors on the Color Wheel

Knowing the different categories of colors can help you come up with a good color scheme for using peach in art and design.

1. Primary colors: These consist of red, blue and yellow. When mixed together, they create a hue of brown. And since brown is a neutral color, you could use it easily along with peach.
2. Secondary colors: These colors are created by mixing the primary colors.
3. Tertiary colors: Made by mixing one primary color and one secondary color.

2. Creating hues of Peach using Orange and Pink

Use more orange or pink to get a wide range of peach hues.

Like all other colors, peach could have different hues. These are obtained by either adding more orange or more pink to the peach created by mixing orange and pink.

What happens if you add more orange to the mix?

If you add more orange, you can expect to get a peach that has a yellowish tint. Since orange is a mix of red and yellow, the peach hue would therefore have a more joyful effect compared to the red, which represents passion and femininity.

What happens if you add more pink to the mix?

If you add more pink to the mix, you will get a peach hue that’s more rosy and red. Since pink is a tint of red, therefore you can expect the peach to lighten up. It will also create a more rosy and pastel hue of peach, rather than a sharp one.

3. The Color Psychology and Effects of Peach

Peach can have a feminine and soft touch.

What do we mean when we say that peach gives the feminine touch? Well, it’s a warm color after all, but that’s just one aspect. Peach takes its name from the outer flesh of peach, the fruit. If you notice the outer skin of a peach, you will see pinkish and orange tints on it. So peach combines the overlapping effects of red and yellow!

Positive aspects	Negative aspects
Good manners	Immature
Calmness	Irresponsible
Communication	Impulsive
Joy	Careless
Youthfulness	Sensitive

4. How is Peach used in Painting?

Add tones and highlights using peach to portray a warm atmosphere.

Peach is a very light color so it is best to add light and highlights on to warm colors.

Creating peach may vary according to the type of painting medium. For instance in an oil painting, you would have to go lighter by adding white. Whereas for acrylic paints, you could also add more water if you’re working using the watercolor or translucent painting method.

Using Peach in various painting media

Acrylic paints:  Do keep in mind that acrylic paint dries really fast!  Whatever color mixing you wish to do, it’s best to do it on a palette rather than on the canvas.

Oil paints:  With oil paints, you can be a bit more flexible with your brown. Oil paints take time to dry, so you can always add more orange or blue directly to the brown paint on your canvas.

Watercolors: Naturally, peach is a very light color. So if you build layers using watercolor, then always dilute the mixture of orange and pink you’ve created. It’s best to start with the lightest tint and then proceed by adding more layers of the same diluted pink and orange mix.

Gouache:  To get a good shade of pink, we recommend you prepare it by mixing red and white. Using a pink hue straight from the tube can create high saturation. Prepare pink first and then mix it with orange for a more natural resulting color.

Creating an underpainting with peach

If you create a sketch using one specific color before adding the actual colors to the painting, then this initial step is known as the underpainting. Although using peach isn’t ideal for an underpainting, but you could always use it to add highlights. Or you could add a bit of brown to create a slightly dark peach. Although using various tints, tones and shades of brown is a much better choice than peach.

Peach in Portrait Paintings

Peach is used very commonly and frequently in portrait paintings. In fact, if you like to start with light tones and slowly build up the shadows, peach is the right color for you. And if you like to paint from dark to light, you can use shades of brown and eventually move toward applying peach to add skin highlights.

Peach in Landscape Paintings

In landscape paintings, you can use tints of peach to add highlights over elements like rocks and leaves. These light tones can be used to depict light reflecting off the surfaces of natural things.

Always notice how some peach hues consist of more orange, whereas the other look more pink. When painting or drawing, add more orange or pink to get the peach that produces enough tonal contrast.

5. How is Peach used in Drawing?

Peach can be used to create warm and gentle marks and strokes.

Since peach is a subtle color, it could be used to add highlights to skin tones or create a warm atmosphere in a drawing.

In a drawing, various peach shades can create a warm and fuzzy feeling. Since peach is usually light, it’s always best to create a variety of tones just like in a painting. However, the approach toward creating multiple hues of peach could vary from one drawing medium to another.

Using peach in various drawing media

Pastels and Chalk: Peach could also be used to create lighter tints of any other color. If you don’t want to use white and wish to add a warmer feeling to your drawing, you could blend peach with the pastels of other colors. But be careful not to overdo the blending, as the colors could appear muddy!

Ink: With ink, you can get peach by mixing orange and pink. Since the original mixture would be too saturated, you will have to dilute it to turn it into peach.

Colored Pencils: Peach can be used easily in colored pencils. It’s a common color that’s available even in the most basic of colored pencil sets.

Drawing pens: It’s hard to get a peach shade pen in a drawing pack unless you’re buying an extensive one with a wide range of colors.

Wax based/Oil pencils: Oil or wax based pencils are great for sketching. They create expressive strokes and since peach can be very light, you can use it on colored supports such as dark toned papers.

Markers: When it comes to markers and peach shades, it’s best to keep a light hand. If you apply a lot of pressure, the peach can become highly saturated, like orange.

Brush pens: In brush pens, you are more likely to find a peach shade in a set of sepia brush pens. Otherwise, if you have a water soluble pack, you would need to create the marks with orange and pink or simply orange, and dilute the marks with water to get peach. It’s also good for illustration where you need to create many shades for skin tones.

We highly recommend getting these brush pens for portraits, as they contain essential portrait peaches along with pinks!

6. How is Peach Used in Design?

In the design world, peach creates the feelings of stability and security.

Since peach is a light color, it could make any room or space more inviting, relaxing and open. If you have a place that is full of orange or pink shades, peach can add a wonderful and light touch. Although peach feels warm and feminine, it could be combined with darker or cooler shades for a more balanced approach and better tonal contrast.

Tips on using peach in design

1. Use in a very solid design to add a soft touch, for instance, geometric designs.
2. Combine with grey and white neutral elements in interior decoration for a more balanced approach.
3. Use peach paint for walls in small rooms that are cluttered and also feel dark because of little light.
4. Use peach in a room that is too monotonous. For instance, if you have many dull colors all jam packed into a space (grey, black, blue, etc), then adding a tone or shade of peach could brighten it up. It will create balance and the room would feel more warm and inviting.

Conclusion

So, you get a beautiful peach color by mixing orange and pink. Remember that the peach hue you get depends on how much orange or pink is in the mix. If there is more orange, the peach will incline towards an orange and it’s the same case with pink. But regardless of the balance and intensity, peach is a warm color as both orange and pink are warm colors too. To create tints of peach, mix white and to create shades, you can tone it down with black, grey or a bit of brown. In both drawings and paintings, you can use peach in portraits and create warm and gentle highlights with any medium.

Do you wish to learn more about shades created using pink? Don’t miss this post about the color created by mixing pink and red together .

Posted in: Color Mixing Color Theory Color Tips Color Psychology