Artists often wonder, "Do I really need an orange in my palette?" Well we love color, so we think there's always room for orange. However, as with most things, need is often subjective. The answer probably depends on how often you paint with orange.

Many artists change their palettes seasonally and only add orange in the fall, but orange is a wonderfully convenient color to have all year long. But if you just can't make room for one more color, orange is one of the easiest colors to mix.

We’ve got tips on how to mix the color orange with ease and also share some of our most popular orange artist paints in watercolor, oil, and acrylic - just in case!

Mixing Orange with Da Vinci Artist Watercolors & Gouache

When mixing orange using Da Vinci watercolor, our bright and bold signature Da Vinci Red (PR254) is a perfect staple red for a palette and can be used to mix a wide variety of oranges. Try blending with varying amounts of Da Vinci Yellow to achieve vibrant, clear oranges, from light to dark.

For more muted oranges, mix Da Vinci Red watercolor with an earth yellow like Da Vinci's Yellow Ochre or Raw Sienna. For even more variety, try adding a touch of white to transform any orange into a soft peach.

When using Da Vinci gouache, a quick shortcut to mixing bold orange colors is blending a warm red like Da Vinci’s Red (PR188) with Yellow Light (Hansa) or Yellow Medium. For more muted oranges that are perfect for autumn, try Da Vinci’s Red gouache with Yellow Deep or Yellow Ochre gouache. Just like with watercolor, adding white gouache to any orange mix can create a range of peaches, light flesh tones, and tinted shades of orange.

Mixing Orange with Da Vinci Artist Oil & Acrylic Paints

There are also plenty of orange options using our artist oils and acrylics. Just like with watercolor, mixing Da Vinci Red with Da Vinci Yellow produces an astounding range of oranges, and both of these colors are also good primary colors for an oil palette. Again, just like with watercolor and gouache, using an earth yellow like Yellow Ochre makes deeper, more muted tones. However in oils and acrylics, an even greater range of peaches and burnt oranges may be achieved by also adding black, white, or gray.

Da Vinci Paints offers acrylic and mixed media artists a wide range of mixable colors in professional-quality fluid acrylics, heavy-body acrylics, and gouache. Click on the links to see all available colors in each collection, or to see our complete collection of oil colors, click on the button below.

Beautiful Oranges Straight from the Tube

Of course, there's absolutely nothing wrong with keeping an orange (or three!) in a palette, and we have plenty of gorgeous oranges to choose including our namesake orange in watercolors, Da Vinci Orange. From bright and bold to rich and russet, Da Vinci Paints has plenty of oranges to please to pickiest palettes.

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