Green and Brown Make What Color? Forest Green Guide

When it comes to the color combinations between brown and green, the grasses, leaves, and mountains come to our minds. 

Using these two combinations surely gives a natural atmosphere either in your portraits, landscapes or in your rooms. What’s more, if they are mixed? So let’s check and answer the question of green and brown make what color. 

Mixing brown and green make a forest green color or dark green hue suited for nature themes of your rooms or paintings. Also, you can achieve a dark and bluish-green color if brown is made from blue and red.

The mixture of these two colors still varies depending on the proportion used between brown and green. So here are some key points to remember in combining brown and green colors.

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What color does mixing brown and green make?

The combination of green and brown results in a forest green color or greenish brown. It usually gives dark green hues but you can make it lighter by adding more white color. 

Please note that technically forest green is not the same as Hunter green. Based on color theory, forest green is lighter and cooler than Hunter green. But at the first glance they do look alike a lot:)

However, the shades of color might still vary depending on the amount of brown and green colors used.

Forest green is considered a cool shade of green, together with other colors like the following: 

• emerald green
• mint
• teal

While warm shades of green are the following:

• khaki
• moss
• fern
• olive green

Read also: What Does Red and Green Make? Easy Mixing Guide

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Green and Brown on the Color Wheel Explained

Green and brown both come from primary colors. Green is a secondary color, contrary to brown, which doesn’t exist in the RYB color wheel model.

Green is made from an equal amount of blue and yellow primary colors. It’s either a cool or warm shade, for any color can appear warm or cool by other tints and shades of colors.

For blue shades:

• cobalt blue
• azure blue
• ultramarine blue colors 

As for yellow, we recommend the following:

• lemon yellow
• titanium yellow
• canary yellow

On the other hand, brown is a neutral color that creates different tones and shades of other colors. If you mix red, blue, and yellow you can create brown color. Any two complementary colors can also give you the color brown. 

However, it doesn’t appear in the RYB color wheel, because in light, brown lights are just a darker orange hue, but our brain recognizes this as the color brown.

The CMYK color model is usually used as ink in printing. This explains why mixing the three primary colors (yellow, cyan, and magenta) gives us the color brown because it’s possible in ink and painting, but not in lights. 

More ink gives less light, so in the CMYK color model, it gives a dark brown color, while in the RYB color wheel, it’s close to a muddy brown color.

Related: What do Blue and Brown make? Testing 8 Shades of Blue & 6 Brown

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Adding more brown to forest green

 Forest green is more of a dark green color. When we mix more brown in it, it gives us a more earthly shade like the following:

• burnt sienna
• raw sienna
• burnt umber

Brown mixed with forest green has varying shades depending on how dark and light the used color brown is. Adding too much brown to forest green will only give you a muddier color.

What color does red-brown and green make?

Mixing green with red-brown creates darker shades of brown since if we mix red and brown it’ll result in a dark deep red color known as maroon. Mixing green (for example a pthalo green) with maroon would only give us a darker brown shade.

What color do you get when you mix green and tan?

If you use emerald green and then mix it with tan brown, you can get a similar shade of kelly green. However, it still depends on how vibrant the green color you will use when you mixed it with tan brown.

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Adding more green to forest green

Since forest green is a dark green shade, mixing bright green paint creates a lighter shade of it. The more green paint is added, the more forest green becomes lighter. 

If you want to create a lighter shade of forest green, there are other colors to use than bright green. For example, adding white to forest green creates a tint, making forest green lighter. 

For a warmer and more vibrant green color, you can just add a little canary yellow or another brighter shade of yellow.

Adding light grey like country grey creates a tone for forest green, so it can be also used.

What color does yellow, green and brown make?

Mixing yellow-green and brown create a wood brown or dark brown color. Since yellow-green is a tertiary hue and brown is a neutral color, the brown paint makes yellow-green go darker and become a brown shade.

Check also: Mix of Yellow and Purple: What These 2 Colors Make? Surprising results

What color does blue, green and brown make?

If you mix a blue-green color with brown, it’ll result in a chocolate torte or deep red color. Specifically, if you use cobalt blue, and emerald green, and mix them with brown created from complementary colors like red and green, the result will give you a dark red color.

Light green and brown make what color?

Green mixed with light green makes a spice-brown color. Spice is an average brown hue and gives a warmer brown color.

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How to use forest green in painting and drawing

Forest green is commonly used in landscape paintings for it gives a cool and calming feeling to the viewers. 

For paintings, you can use the forest green paint as shadows to other dark green hues and it’s also suited for nocturne-themed paintings.

Please check recommended best paint brushes to use for your awe-inspiring paintings.

As for drawing, forest green is great to use as a tint in nature drawings like trees, grass, or forest. You can also use green shades such as sap green as a tint, available in tinted charcoal forms.

Tinted charcoal is popular to use for classical drawings. If you want to create impressionist drawings, we recommend using oil pastels for better results.

You can also use forest green in digital arts. If you want to have dark greens, you only need to add another layer of green inks. Green inks are also best for monochromatic drawings and more textured grass.

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How to use forest green in design

Forest green walls, calming and nature-inspired atmosphere are best used in libraries and drawing rooms. 

It’s suitable to match these walls with other green hues (light and dark colors) in the background to light neutrals for space.

The use of complementary colors is also recommended for they complement and contradict each other. We recommend using brighter colors for the balance of dark green colors such as the following:

• Gold
• Cream
• Red
• Brown
• Burgundy
• Orange
• White
• Yellow

Forest green is also good as an accent color. You can use it for walls, pillows, and curtains. Just keep in mind that if you use forest green in pillows, that means you want to highlight the pillows or other furniture in your room. For interior paints, we recommend using Krylon Colormaxx products and Rust-Oleum.

Forest green is commonly used in creating advertisements and trademarks because it gives good highlights for designs. 

Forest green matching colors

Forest green is great to pair with caramel brown, and blue and violet tints like sapphire blue and lilac. This pairing is called an analogous color scheme. 

Cool blue colors such as navy blue and turquoise blue as well as neutral colors are also good for forest green.

Matching forest green with its complementary color, bright red, creates a warm atmosphere suited for the Christmas season. 

Other colors are also popular to use for forest green colors such as the following:

• fiery orange
• teal
• coral
• royal blue
• burgundy

Since forest green is a versatile color, almost all colors in the color wheel go well with it. From earthly shades to greyish tones, nothing can go wrong with forest green. So feel free to explore all kinds of colors that match your styles.

Read also: What Does Red And Orange Make? Color Mixing Swatches

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FAQs

What is the forest color meaning?

Forest green holds positive and negative meanings. The positive meanings are prosperity, peace, balance, luck, growth, generosity, and freshness.

While negative meanings are individualism, materialism, envy, and judgemental.

What color does mixing brown and green make in the eyes?

We see in our eyes that brown and green make a greenish-brown color. It’s because we see colors based on the wavelengths and how they reflect and absorb in our eyes. The shorter the wavelengths, the paler we see colors.

Do brown and green go together?

Yes, brown and green paint goes well, especially in gender-neutral bedrooms. For example, you can match hunter green with cinnamon brown, and a chocolate sofa with celery curtains.

What is brown to green?

It’s possible to turn brown to green by mixing brown and green paint. However, the result will only give a forest green color. If you want to have a brighter green color, try adding more green until you achieve your desired shade of green.

Green and brown are not related on the color wheel, they are not complimentary colors. Green is a secondary color created by mixing yellow and blue, while brown is neutral color and is not on the color wheel at all.

Does black and green make brown?

No, mixing black with green only gives us a darker version of green but not specifically the color brown. This is also the same with other colors mixing with black, resulting in darker versions of colors.

Wrap Up

Brown and green make a duller green color or specifically a forest green color. Depending on the amount of brown and green you use, the shades can change, though they will still be under the shades of green.

So don’t limit yourself to experimenting with colors that will go with brown and green paint. Have a good day everyone!