Since the complement of blue is orange, we can use orange colors to mute our blues. Ultramarine blue plus cadmium orange will give you a dull, muted blue. Cobalt blue plus orange will result in a less vibrant blue-gray, which is a great muted blue. You can also use brown to mute your blues.
To make a blue color appear less saturated, try adding small amounts of complementary colors like orange or a neutral color like gray to tone it down. You can also mix in some white to lighten the blue and make it softer.
You can also add contrast to a blue color scheme by choosing warmer purple tones, such as orchid as opposed to indigo, to counteract the coolness of blue.
I would try to pull in some black and white to add sort of a graphic, modern effect to the room. Maybe bring in a large painting that has a lot of black and white but then some cool colors to go with your blue. OR some art in black frames with a white mat. The black and white will sort of mute the blue.
When a color is too bright, you want to “gray it down.” This means neutralizing the color by adding its complementary color to any degree that you want—either on the warm side or the cool side—which means the color you make may not necessarily be gray.
The best way to cancel out fantasy hair colors is by using color theory, where you use the opposite color of the shade you want to neutralize. So if you look at a color wheel, the opposite of blue is orange. So putting orange dye over blue hair can neutralize it.
Compensating: If color is: Too Blue: Add small amount of Black or Brown. Add small amount of White to compensate darkening effect. Orange may also be added to neutralize Blue. Too Red: Add small amount of Green, Blue or Black.
Toning shampoos and conditioners are your best friends when it comes to fading blue or green stains. As well as cleansing and conditioning hair, they serve up a double hit of washing out and removing stains while also adding fresh pigment to neutralise unwanted tones.
Pure yellow pigments absorb blue light.
Add black to blue to make dark blue. Alternatively, mix a little bit of orange with blue to make a darker blue. You can also make dark blue by mixing blue and purple or by mixing cyan and magenta.
Mix in a bit of a complementary color.
Complementary colors are colors that lay opposite of each other on the color wheel. Adding a little bit of a complementary color to your first color will help dull the shade down. For example, if you wanted to dull down red paint, you would add a little bit of green paint to it.
In order to make your blue lighter in value, you can add white. Simple enough. Blues can also be very dark in value. In fact, most people don't realize that black is often just a very dark blue.
To dull a color, you add a very small amount of its opposite color. To red, you add green. To blue, you add orange. To yellow, you add violet.
Mixing a color with any neutral color (including black, gray, and white) reduces the chroma, or colorfulness, while the hue (the relative mixture of red, green, blue, etc., depending on the colorspace) remains unchanged.
The trick to muting a bright color is mixing in a bit of its complement. When painting with my limited color urban sketching palette, I approximate complements by picking the closest color in my palette, which works pretty well. In the diagram below, I dull down an orange ( #1 ) with a blue from my palette ( #2).
When a color is too bright and needs to be toned down, or you want to create a shadow, mix a small amount of the color opposite on the color wheel to “neutralize” the color.
Creating a Warm Blue
If you want to make a warm blue, we recommend beginning with a blue shade that is already quite warm, like ultramarine blue. Firstly, burnt sienna is a darker, warmer shade of red, so combining it with ultramarine blue will create a darker, warmer shade of blue.
add in 2 drops white to 1 drop blue - mix well , line under each colour. (you will likely use all the paint on your swatch.
if you are trying to cancel out blue hair, you would use its opposite color: orange.
Deeper peach and orange color correctors help counteract bluish hues, which makes them great for neutralizing dark spots and dark circles on those with medium to deep skin tones. If you're unsure which to choose, consider your skin tone and your undertones.
Green will cancel out red, orange (peach) will cancel out blue, lavender cancels out yellow and yellow will cancel out purple & pinkish tones.
Orange, the shade directly across the color wheel from blue is the shade's technical complement. This applies to any shade: light blue and rust orange, tangerine and navy.