Background: An essential factor in colour harmony

Colour harmony is typically assessed using a neutral (e.g. grey) background, but little is known about the effect that background colour has on the perception of saliency and harmony. A series of experiments has been conducted to assess the effects of lightness, hue angle and chroma difference on observer perceptions of saliency and harmony for an array of single and dual foreground colour patches viewed against numerous backgrounds. Experiments enabled observers to cluster perceptions of saliency and harmony as a function of variable background colour based on a 5-point semantic-differential scale running from a strongly harmonious to strongly disharmonious continuum. Results indicate that each background colour has the potential to create either high or low saliency and harmony ratings depending on the specific foreground colour/s viewed against it. This suggests that background colour is intimately linked with observer perceptions of saliency and harmony and should be seriously considered in future work as a further dimension and determinant of colour harmony. Results seem to raise questions on already existing ‘harmonious ’ colour combinations that have been proposed to date. With a simple change in background colour, the possibility of creating a disharmonious from a formerly termed harmonious combination seems highly likely. The reverse holds true