A color wheel arranges colors around the edges of a circle. Primary colors are in the middle. Three common color wheels are the artist's wheel, the subtractive wheel, and the additive wheel.
Color wheels are helpful in the discussion and selection of colors using any color model.
A standard color wheel has 12 distinct hues, but does not have any visual information about saturation or value. These 12 hues can be classified in three categories, primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary colors are the defining colors of the wheel. In the color wheels below, they appear in the center as well as equally spaced around the circle. On the traditional artist's color wheel red, blue, and yellow are primary colors.