Warm and Cool Blues – Which are Which?

Recently I was tasked with a commission to do for a large room that was north facing and had a bit of a dark feel to it. I wanted to use blues colours in the painting, and to add some warmth, I wanted to use warm blues.

Little did I know the conflict I would find when looking to confirm my thoughts on what actually were warm blues!

For me, I thought that blues that sided more towards the turquoise or cerulean end of the spectrum would be warmer than those that sided towards ultramarine and purple type blues. That was just my feeling.

However, there are others that think the opposite and point at the fact that the blues that are more on the purple end of the scale have more red in them which is a warm colour.

Maybe it is just the case that it depends on the individual blue colour – e.g. a blue with a bit of yellow added to make it more turquoise could be warm as the yellow colour is also warm.

I guess there are also different purples which can be warm and cool, for example velvet purple as compared to Windsor violet.

Is it all just a matter of opinion on what is a warm or cool blue or is to more technical than that? What are people’s thoughts on this?

In the end I went with my gut on what I thought was warm and I guess it was also geared towards what went with the surroundings so may have been influenced more by that, but it was still heading to turquoise.