"In general, warm colors are those in the red, orange, and yellow families, while cool colors are those in the green, blue, and purple families," Dale says. Think scarlet, peach, pink, amber, sienna, and gold versus cooler teal, eggplant, emerald, aqua, and cobalt.

The color wheel is split in half between warm and cool colors, which are pairs of complementary colors. Conventional wisdom groups these into two broad color families. The warm colors are red, orange, and yellow. The cool colors are blue, green, and purple.