Understanding Color Theory: Tints, Tones, and Shades

Today, we will be learning more about color theory.

This article is the second in our Understanding Color Theory series. The previous (and first) one talked about the basics of color including its components (hue, value, and chroma) and models (RGB vs CMYK).

Today, we will learn about tints, tones, and shades of colors — also known as changes in color value and saturation.

Hue vs. Saturation vs. Value

Value: How light or dark a color is. Pale and light colors are high in value, whereas dark colors are low in value.

Saturation: How pure or intense a color is. Pure hues are the most vivid and brightest. Changes in saturation make the colors dull.

Tints vs. Tones vs. Shades

Tints, tones, and shades are how we name and understand these changes. Manipulating these changes allows you to influence consumer moods, convey specific brand messaging, and create more engaging user experiences.

Let’s discuss these in more detail.

What is a tint?

A tint is a pure color or a mix of them with white added to it. Tints create lighter versions of the base/pure color such as most pastels.

Pink, baby blue, and peach are all tints.

Color tints explained

Tints may sometimes look bright or vivid, but they are not. If anything, they are lighter and paler versions of the base color. In other words, they can go from only a touch lighter than your original color to something so white that you can barely spot any color in it.

Designers love tints for their easy and relaxed properties. They instantly uplift a design, making it look fresh, free, and feminine.

Tinted colors work well as contrasts too, especially when faced with stronger, deeper hues.

Such as the TikTok logo.

TikTok logo

Look at the turquoise — a blue-green tint — equalizing the high-energy black-red duo in the design.

Tints in Design and Branding

Tinted colors are extremely popular in brand design and marketing. Here are a few things you can do with them:

• Create a soft and friendly aesthetic.

Tints convey warmth, friendliness, and approachability. Use them to create wellness business logos, children’s products, and feminine aesthetics. We recently compiled more than 50 jewelry logos in this post, and you can see how tints feature prominently in almost every design. In addition to jewelry logos, tinted colors can also be used in health logos, pet logos, and art and crafts logos.

A wellness logo design by Sumesh A K/Dribbble

Fintech logo in lively lilac with a dark background. Designed by Paperpillar/Dribbble

Jewelry logo in powdery pink pastel by Mustafa Akülker for Marka Works Branding Agency/Dribbble

• Convey a modern and minimalist brand.

Light colors can make a design feel airy, spacious, and clean. Leverage them in tech branding or startup designs where you want to highlight an environment of innovation and simplicity.

An Edutech app logo and branding by Paperpillar/Dribbble

A creative logo design by Vadim Carazan/Dribbble

A quick layout design by Paperpillar/Dribbble. Yes, we know. We’ve featured them thrice in the post now. They are that good.

• Elicit emotions of trust and creativity.

Tints, because of their clean aesthetics, are ideal to remove any creative clutter from your mind. Surround yourself with light pastels when you want to feel your most imaginative. Replicate the effect by using light blue, light purple, and pink to design logos and branding for healthcare brands, creative industries, and fintech startups.

An ed-tech app concept by MARTA for Qubstudio: Digital Product Design Agency/Dribbble

Skincare packaging design by Necula Creative/Dribbble. Gentle pastels help the design convey healing and care.

Mental health app branding by Camille Piot for Pelostudio/Dribbble. Soft colors uplift the brand message of simplicity and accessibility.

Practical Tips When Using Tints

• Consider readability when placing any text in a tinted background. Heighten the contrast to ensure text readability.
• Pay attention to color pairing when designing in tints or pastels. A single soft color may not make the impact you want. So pair it with another and widen its visual and emotional reach.

What is a tone?

A tone is a pure color or a mix of them with grey added to it. Tones are duller, subdued versions of the color, but don’t let the terminology fool you. Tones are anything but dull and subdued.

In the right conditions and the right hands, tones give you the most sophisticated, subtle, and complex colors you can ask for.

Color tones explained

Since tones dilute the vivid brightness of a pure hue, they are the best way to achieve three leading branding goals of the year: minimal designs, meaningful branding, and purpose-driven brands. They provide clean, functioning design with an emphasis on a professional look that’s still friendly and welcoming.

Like tints, tones also exist on a spectrum. If your grey has more white than black, the tone you get will be lighter and softer. A darker grey (more black than white) will create a richer and deeper tone.

But take heed. Tones can quickly take a turn for the worse if you add a touch more grey than needed.

Tones in Design and Branding

Toned colors bring depth and sophistication to the design. Here is how you make the best of them:

• Create sophisticated and complex designs.

Tones can add a sense of refinement to the design, making it appear more trustworthy and mature. Muted tones also often evoke elegance and exclusivity. Use them to create luxury brand logos, high-end product branding, and professional corporate identities.

Healthcare branding design by Sudipta Mitra/Behance

Healthcare branding design by Sudipta Mitra/Behance

Organic food branding by 327 Creative Studio/Behance

• Establish visual hierarchy and focus.

Use tones for secondary elements in your web and identity design. These colors can guide the eye more easily, without upsetting the dominant colors. Secondary text, icons, and other elements can all be colored in tones to help differentiate elements without relying on stark contrasts.

Construction logo design and branding by Logo Design/Behance

Construction logo design and branding by Logo Design/Behance

Home decor branding by Polina Stoylik/Behance

• Convey a specific mood or atmosphere.

Tones replace the loud brilliance of colors with calmness and restraint. The corporate world loves toned colors for their ability to make a space feel calm and professional, yet never cold or detached. But be careful with that last part. If your tone is based on a cool color palette, it can quickly make the design or space feel cold too. Add warm colors in the mix to stop that from happening.

Spago and Vino wordmark logo by Riccardo Agostinelli/Behance

Muted tones convey a comforting and enriching food branding. Designed by Caio César/Behance

Mellow orange and beige tones highlight nostalgia and heritage in this food branding. Design by Heavy/Behance

Practical Tips When Using Tones

• If your brand is present in the digital and physical worlds, both, tones should feature prominently in your color palette. They are rendered perfectly in both mediums and make your color matching more straightforward.
• Tones are perfect for low-contrast images. They help you achieve a balanced overall look without taking away from your dominant color.

What is a shade?

A shade is a pure color or a mix of them with black added to it. Shades produce darker colors than tones because there’s no grey in there. While tones somewhat mute the colors, shades don’t.

Color shades explained

Shades produce rich and intense colors, such as burgundy, emerald, plum, and rust. As darker variations of colors, shades introduce drama and sophistication into the mix. You can use shades to make the design look more grounded, luxurious, stable, and trustworthy.

Like tints and tones, shades also exist in range.

Depending on the amount of black you’ve added to a color, its shade can be a touch darker than the original or something so black that you can’t make out any other color in it.

Shades in Design and Branding

Shades can refine your brand communication. They can make your design look authoritative and evoke feelings of reliability, trustworthiness, and even chic urbanness.

Below are a few ways you can make shades work for your branding:

• Add depth and dimension.

Shades are complex colors and bring that nuance to their designs too. You can use them to create shadows and highlights, thus making the design look multi-dimensional. Shaded gradients take the dynamism up a notch where you can make a design look incredibly more immersive and real than a simple flat color piece. The Firefox logo design is a great example of this.

Branding agency design on Behance. Dark red shades convey a high-energy brand focused on design and drama.

Less intense shading variety ensures balance and color cohesion. Infographic design by Mercer T. Suppiger/Behance

Design quotes created by Riccardo Vicentelli/Behance. Pink and green retain their sharpness while also becoming more mature and restrained in this shaded design.

• Highlight high-worth design elements.

Shades are powerful colors that can hold their own when paired with other strong hues. The presence of black gives them stability and makes them perfect colors for high net-worth items such as CTAs, social media banners, and even typographic logos such as wordmarks or lettermarks. These logotypes rely on font and color excellence to convey their messaging and shades have the genius to get the job done right.

A darkened white allows the wordmark to pop in this color-rich logo. Design by Alisa Syrychko/Behance

Darkly shaded backgrounds pair perfectly well with slight shade in the CTA. Design by Supriya Vulivireddy

A summer-y social media banner design by Deborah Campbell/Behance

• Evoke specific emotional responses.

Thanks to their color complexity, shades can covey a range of emotions. Darker shades bring a sense of drama and stateliness to the design. Lighter shades convey intensity and buzz. Overall they make the design look more grounded, mature, and confident. You can combine tints and shades in the same design to create airiness and space that’s more poised and assertive than what a lighter pastel can achieve.

Olive green, rust, and brown come together to create a warm and cozy restaurant branding design by Pedro Renan/Behance

Pink and black infuse the design with a high-energy aesthetic by Saravana M/Behance

The forest imagery balances warm and cool tones with brilliant color shades in this AI illustration. Concept by Rocky Roark for Blue Cyclops/Behance

Practical Tips When Using Shades

• Be careful of how shades can instantly alter the perception of color. If your shade is even a little off the mark, the design can go from warm to depressed pretty soon.

• Ensure sufficient contrast between shades and other colors, especially around text. Legibility can be a concern when working with darker colors.

Create glorious monochromes combining tints, tones, and shades

While today’s post will help you a lot when you are knee-deep scouring the earth looking for the best color contrasts, monochromes must be where we end the discussion.

Monochrome color scheme

Monochromes are single-color palettes where the base color remains the same and secondary and accent colors are used taking its tints, tones, and shades.

Green Apples by Paul Cezanne

Green Apples (Paul Cezanne, 1873) is a beautiful example of monochromatic painting. So are famous fashion brands such as Florence by Mills, Kylie Skin, and Fenty Skin etc.

Fenty Beauty

Florence by Mills

Kylie Cosmetics

These monochromatic color palettes look pleasant, clean, and nicely put together. What’s more, they are easy to achieve and can instantly uplift your brand’s market appeal.

A quick disclaimer though, monochromes technically aren’t supposed to have more than one color in the piece — not even its own variations. True monochromes are single-color designs (it’s there in the word ‘mono’!) Like the Apple logo or the entire string of luxury fashion logos such as Chanel and the lot.

Whether you are sticking with this classical definition or experimenting with tints and shades of your favorite color, we hope today’s discussion will help you make the most of the process and deliver the right color strategy for your brand.