Paint mixing glossary
By Marco, painter and founder of chromilla ยท Last checked August 2026
Short definitions of the words painters meet when mixing color, in plain language. Each term has its own link, so you can point someone straight at it.
- Masstone
- The color of a paint straight from the tube, applied thick. It is the darkest, most saturated look a pigment has.
- Undertone
- The color a paint shows when spread thin or mixed with white. Two paints with the same masstone can have different undertones.
- Tinting strength
- How strongly a pigment changes a mix. A high tinting strength pigment such as phthalo blue moves a mix a long way in small amounts.
- Dry shift
- The change in color as paint dries. Acrylic usually dries darker because its binder is milky when wet and clears as it dries.
- Glazing
- Laying a thin, transparent layer of paint over a dry layer so the color underneath shows through and is tinted by it.
- Scumbling
- Dragging a thin, broken layer of lighter or opaque paint over a dry layer so patches of the layer below stay visible.
- Chroma
- How intense or saturated a color is, from gray at zero to the most vivid version of that hue.
- Value
- How light or dark a color is, independent of its hue. Getting value right matters more to a painting than getting hue exact.
- Hue
- The family a color belongs to on the color wheel: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet and the steps between.
- Kubelka-Munk
- A model of how pigment layers absorb and scatter light. Chromilla uses it to predict how paints mix, which is subtractive, unlike mixing light on a screen.
- Delta E (dE2000)
- A number for how different two colors look. Under about 1 most people see no difference; CIEDE2000 is the version Chromilla uses.
- Complementary color
- The color opposite another on the color wheel. Mixing a little of the complement lowers chroma without reaching for black.
- Tertiary color
- A color made by mixing a primary with a neighboring secondary, such as red-orange or blue-green.
- Mud
- A dull, lifeless mix, usually from too many pigments or complements that cancel out. Fewer tubes per mix is the usual fix.
- Opacity
- How well a paint hides what is under it. Opaque pigments such as titanium white cover in one coat.
- Transparency
- How much light passes through a paint layer. Transparent pigments are good for glazing and keep watercolor bright.
- Pigment code
- The Colour Index name printed on a tube, such as PB29 for ultramarine blue. The same code means the same pigment across brands.
- Limited palette
- A small set of tubes, often three to five, used for a whole painting. The Zorn palette is a well known example.
- Mother color
- A base mix added in small amounts to every other mix in a painting so all the colors share a family resemblance.
- Tint
- A color with white added. Tints are lighter and usually cooler and less saturated than the original.
- Shade
- A color with black or a dark color added. Shades are darker and can lose chroma quickly.
- Tone
- A color with gray, or its complement, added. Tones are softer and less saturated than the original.
- Warm and cool bias
- The lean of a pigment toward a neighbor on the wheel. A warm red leans orange; a cool red leans violet. Bias decides how clean a mix stays.
- Gamut
- The range of colors a set of paints can mix. Colors outside a palette's gamut cannot be reached, however you mix.
- Color temperature
- Whether a color reads warm (toward red, orange and yellow) or cool (toward blue and green), relative to the colors around it.
Want the model behind these terms? How Chromilla mixes paint.