The Power of Neutrals

I've recently been reading a lot about color, and have been reminded that pure colors can be punched up when they are surrounded by neutral, or grayed-down colors.  Using complementary colors mixed together will gray down and neutralize the color.  If you use equal parts of each complement, you get a perfect neutral.  But you can push that neutral to either the warm or the cool side by adding more of one complement that the other. 

Then, when you add a pure color near the focal point, it's much more likely to stand out.