The neutral magenta

Let’s talk about magenta: the color, the concept and the absolute phenomenon that it is. If you couldn’t tell by the premise of this article, I’m a pretty big fan of magenta, and, as per usual, I have a lot of thoughts concerning this topic. Even more controversially, I believe that magenta is a neutral color.

First, let’s talk about the color wheel. I’ll be using the Red-Green-Blue, or RGB, foundations as our primary sets. It’s worth mentioning that I’m focusing on magenta in this article, but green is a key player here as well. In each color, we have a true warm-tone, a true cool-tone, and—my first controversial opinion—a true neutral-tone. 

Magenta is commonly considered a warm-toned color and green is commonly considered a cool-toned color, but if that were really the case then neither of our color wheels here would work very well. If this were to be true, the color wheels would be either overwhelmingly warm or overwhelmingly cool, respectively. We have these colors set as our primaries because they give us the widest spectrum available. Apparently, humans like to have options—who knew. Just kidding, I knew.

In the RGB color wheel, red is our true warmth, although yellow really is a better example since red can change dramatically depending on whether it’s warm or cool leaning. Blue is our true cool, but which shade of blue? No one knows for sure—it’s not like this is science or anything (except for that it is. Don’t worry, we’ll get there). Green is our neutral tone. 

People would also dispute RGB as valid for this conversation in favor of replacing green with yellow, and I think this helps a lot with theory and conceptualization. We’re going to run in that direction, and we’ll hop back over to RGB soon. 

We have red, yellow, and blue sitting in our prestigious primary positions. This is leaning a touch warm because red and yellow both lean warm, but what we really want to be looking at is the perfect combination of yellow, the true warm, and blue, the true cool. 

If you learned basic color theory in the first grade, you would know that yellow and blue mixed together somehow become green. Mixed in even parts, our truest warm and our truest cool cancel each other out and become neutral. There’s no other word to really describe that so we’ll settle on green—in its purest form—being our neutral. 

If the color balance is off even slightly, then it will lean either warm or cool. It would, however, be nearly impossible to make this perfect mix in real life whether due to human error or lack of proper pigments because for this to work, things have to go absolutely perfectly in each stage. 

So green is a neutral color. Why does this even matter? This article is supposed to be about magenta, and I really haven’t said much about it. Be patient with me. Now, to hop back over to RGB. 

RGB is popular for many uses, but it’s also important to consider that this is the way human eyes are set up in three cones—red, green, and blue. We see color based on wavelengths of light. Depending on which wavelengths are absorbed by something and what is reflected to us results in the light our eyes take in, thus allowing us to see color. 

We get to look at color through a uniquely human lens, and that’s awesome. Unfortunately, it means we’ll never understand the world the way a mantis shrimp does, but our perception is beautiful and unique. There’s still no way to prove that all humans, with all the right pieces in the right places, see colors the same way.

The color cones in the back of the eye don’t always all light up. That’s how we get to magenta—see, magenta doesn’t actually exist. Well, it does, but it doesn’t. Magenta doesn’t have its own wavelength, so technically it isn’t real, but we can still perceive it. 

Magenta is the complete absence of green. You see magenta when you look at something and the green cone doesn’t fire at all. If green is the perfect combination of warm and cool cancelling out into neutral, then magenta must be neutral too. Green and magenta are like black and white; they are true opposites, so different that they become the only thing that shares the other’s nature.

Colors, to us, must be relative. There’s almost no way that color isn’t subjective, but at the same time, it seems entirely objective. Everything that I’ve written here is all science and theory, and truly is an opinion. I believe that what I perceive to be color makes magenta a neutral color and that’s pretty neat, if I do say so myself. 

There’s still a ton of things to talk about on the topic of magenta and I’m really excited to get into a follow-up soon. The follow-up will go more into real life application and why it matters to me—and why it should matter to you—that magenta is a neutral. Until then, happy color theory!