Theorical Colors ranges - Color Theory

Question

I'm looking for specific ranges of colors here.

I want the range (in Hexa or RGB) for warm colors and cool colors, active and passive colors for exemple:

Warm color from #DD6421 to #FF0000 (random colors here), etc. I couldn't find this kind of information on my friend, Google. So, if someone knows this kind of information... it would be great.

Also, I don't know if I can ask this kind of question here but, how do I "calculate" color type: primary palet, secondary palet, etc. and calculate color relationship like: complementary, double complementary, etc...

I don't know this is a good site for that, but any help is appreciated. I'm trying to collect as much information as I can.

Thank you all

Answer 1

I've never come across a reference table like you describe. I think it's largely instinctive, and some colours that would perhaps be listed as "warm" on such a table, would actually fill the role of "cool" colours in certain compositions depending on what other colours are present. This is because relative colour temperature is far more important than absolute colour temperature; Any comprehensive reference table could only consider each colour in a vacuum, and would therefore often be inaccurate. This site explains this better and gives you some examples.

As for the second part of your question, have you tried Adobe's Kuler? If you go on Create, it lets you pick your base colour, and will calculate a range of useful palettes for you. It's a brilliant "first step" tool!