Colour is additive, not paint
Stage lighting colours and what they actually do
Light mixes additively, which is the opposite of paint: red and green make yellow, and all three together make white. The practical half is what colour does to people. Saturated colour on faces reads as striking from the booth and as illness on camera, which is why experienced designers keep the front close to white and put the colour everywhere else.
The order to do it in
Step 1
Learn the additive primaries by mixing them: red plus green is yellow, green plus blue is cyan, all three is white.
Step 2
Get comfortable with colour temperature. Warm around 3200K reads intimate, cool around 6500K reads modern and clinical.
Step 3
Test any colour on a face before committing. Deep blue and heavy magenta are the usual offenders.
Step 4
Put saturation behind and around people rather than on them.
Step 5
If there is a camera, cut your front saturation roughly in half from what looks right by eye.
Drills that practise this
Color Match
Palette Builder
Build the Look
Try it before you read more
Three briefs on a real club rig, scored on the stage you made, and you keep the picture. It takes about two minutes and needs no account.
Questions
Why does blue light make everyone look ill?
Skin has almost no blue in it, so a saturated blue front light has nothing to reflect and faces go grey and hollow. Blue is excellent behind people and hard work in front of them.
What is the difference between colour temperature and colour?
Colour temperature describes which white you are using, warm through cool. It sets the emotional baseline before you add any saturated colour at all, and "just white" is still a choice.
More lighting guides
Stage lighting setup, in the order that actually works
Work out the order to aim and level a stage so it looks right from the seats and on camera.
DMX lighting explained, without the jargon
Understand what a DMX address is, why fixtures fight each other, and how to patch a rig without overlaps.
How to program a light show
Understand how a programmed show is built and why edits to one cue leak into later ones.
Stage lighting for small venues and bars
Make a small handful of fixtures in a low room look deliberate rather than thrown at the stage.
How to light a band
Know where to put light on a band so it looks like a show rather than a lit rehearsal.