The color (hue) wheel is a systematic arrangement of all the colors. There are many different versions of the color wheel available depending on your needs. There are 6 basic breakdowns of the color schemes ( and obviously there are many more categories)
^Sir Isaac Newton’s interpretation of the color wheel (Above)
1 Analogous- Shades of black & white. No colors!
2 Monochromatic- consecutive colors in a color wheel
3 Complementary- colors that lie exactly opposite to each other in the color wheel
4 Split complementary- single color and two colors on either sides of its complement
5 Double complimentary- colors that make an X in the color wheel
6 Triad- colors that are equidistant (make a ^ triangle in on color wheel) from each other on the color wheel
As for us, Color is a powerful tool in visual merchandising! It can make or break a display… Each color in the color wheel is associated with an emotion. Lets say we all have very colorful emotions 🙂 but as a visual merchandiser not necessarily we can please every single person however our job is to bring as much audience in as possible. For example some colors might be too strong for a particular age group but the same color can be extremely fashionable for some other audience. As a visual merchandiser we need to look at our audience or say target market. Define who your customer is, what time of year is it, how are the economic conditions… and so on! For example there is a reason why we see so much of red in Christmas season in west, in Diwali (India) and Chinese new year in the east! During a festive season bright and warm colors like red, orange and yellow are widely used. All these colors induce energy and subconsciously constantly reminds the audience of the forthcoming festival.
A well balanced use of colors can stop the passers by to see a window display. Any color, I believe, brings the whole display to life, I cannot imagine a world in monochromatic theme… below is an example of the work my group and I did, try and guess the color theme we were following (ignore the wall 😉 and what kind of effect does the color scheme have on you as the audience? Is it inviting? Feel free to ask, comment…
Here is a hint 😉 🙂 
Adding or subtracting colors can do wonders to literally anything you see around yourself, try and see for yourself! Have fun coloring! 🙂
Sources: Wikipedia
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