What color do you mix to get the purple color?

Answer 1

Actually, most of what we were taught in school about color is wrong. We were taught that there were THREE primary colors - red, yellow and blue. But "primary" is defined as those colors from which all other colors can be made. A quick look at any color printer cartridge selection would quickly demonstrate that the primary PIGMENT colors are in fact cyan, magenta and yellow. Every other color can be made from these three. So the answer to your question (if you're talking about paint, anyway) is "cyan and magenta".

But there's more to it than that. There is another set of "primary" colors - the colors of light itself. Where a perfect balance of primary pigment colors produces black, the perfect balance of primary colors of light produces white - and these primaries are red, green and blue. If you overlap beams of red, green and blue light (like from LED flashlights, for example) you'll get white. And if you mix red and green light, you'll get yellow! If you mix green and blue, you'll get cyan. If you ever have a chance to look closely at a working old-fashioned color CRT screen, you'll quickly see that the tiny colored dots used to produce every other color are, in fact, red green and blue - the primary colors of light.

If you're starting to see a pattern here, you're not wrong. A modern color wheel will show the correct placement of colors, in which the primary colors of one "system" mostly correspond to the secondary colors of the other system. If you work in fireworks (as I do), you'll be surprised at the way the colors of light mix and the effects they produce. And if you wonder (as I did when I was young) why no matter how hard you try you can never get purple paint by mixing red and blue, well now you know! :o)