Obsessing about saturation and value

I will be rabbitting on relentlessly about the importance of saturation (dull or saturated) and value (light or dark) as well as colour when designing colour schemes for rooms, quilts, web sites, whatever.  And yet, I STILL have trouble identifying some colours like these –

or imagining what a saturated dark yellow or a dull light red-orange would look like (answers at the end of this post).

I have trawled the interweb for a colour wheel which shows variations in saturation and value for a standard colour wheel.  Despite finding this stunning beauty…

Munsell Chart from WeMakeThemClick.com

…I could not find one that helped me identify colours easily by breaking them down by colour, saturation and value.  I guess representing the three dimensions (colour, saturation and value) on a 2D screen can’t be done.  So I decided I would have to create my own!  I use the words dull, muted and saturated for saturation, and light, medium and dark for value.

Here’s what red-orange looks like –

Red Orange

Here’s one for yellow –

Yellow

So….saturated dark yellow looks like this –

and dull light red-orange looks like this –

and those colours in the beginning –

…are muted medium yellow-green, dull dark yellow and dull medium red-orange.

Wow!  Can’t wait to do the grids for the remaining twelve colours of my colour wheel.