Harmonious Color Pairings: Insights from Human Preference and Natural Hue Statistics
Fuente:
arXiv
Enregistré dans:
| Auteurs principaux: | , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Publié: |
2025
|
| Sujets: | |
| Accès en ligne: | |
| Tags: |
Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
|
| _version_ | 1866912688524754944 |
|---|---|
| author | Forni, Ortensia Darmon, Alexandre Benzaquen, Michael |
| author_facet | Forni, Ortensia Darmon, Alexandre Benzaquen, Michael |
| contents | While color harmony has long been studied in art and design, a clear consensus remains elusive, as most models are grounded in qualitative insights or limited datasets. In this work, we present a quantitative, data-driven study of color pairing preferences using controlled hue-based palettes in the HSL color space. Participants evaluated combinations of thirteen distinct hues, enabling us to construct a preference matrix and define a combinability index for each color. Our results reveal that preferences are highly hue dependent, challenging the assumption of universal harmony rules proposed in the literature. Yet, when averaged over hues, statistically meaningful patterns of aesthetic preference emerge, with certain hue separations perceived as more harmonious. Strikingly, these patterns align with hue distributions found in natural landscapes, pointing to a statistical correspondence between human color preferences and the structure of color in nature. Finally, we analyze our color-pairing score matrix through principal component analysis, which uncovers two complementary hue groups whose interplay underlies the global structure of color-pairing preferences. Together, these findings offer a quantitative framework for studying color harmony and its potential perceptual and ecological underpinnings. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_15777 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Harmonious Color Pairings: Insights from Human Preference and Natural Hue Statistics Forni, Ortensia Darmon, Alexandre Benzaquen, Michael Human-Computer Interaction Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Physics and Society While color harmony has long been studied in art and design, a clear consensus remains elusive, as most models are grounded in qualitative insights or limited datasets. In this work, we present a quantitative, data-driven study of color pairing preferences using controlled hue-based palettes in the HSL color space. Participants evaluated combinations of thirteen distinct hues, enabling us to construct a preference matrix and define a combinability index for each color. Our results reveal that preferences are highly hue dependent, challenging the assumption of universal harmony rules proposed in the literature. Yet, when averaged over hues, statistically meaningful patterns of aesthetic preference emerge, with certain hue separations perceived as more harmonious. Strikingly, these patterns align with hue distributions found in natural landscapes, pointing to a statistical correspondence between human color preferences and the structure of color in nature. Finally, we analyze our color-pairing score matrix through principal component analysis, which uncovers two complementary hue groups whose interplay underlies the global structure of color-pairing preferences. Together, these findings offer a quantitative framework for studying color harmony and its potential perceptual and ecological underpinnings. |
| title | Harmonious Color Pairings: Insights from Human Preference and Natural Hue Statistics |
| topic | Human-Computer Interaction Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Physics and Society |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.15777 |