What Color does Pink and Yellow Make Mixed? Real Swatches

Last Updated on March 20, 2024 by Masha Eretnova

Are you stuck on what color pink and yellow make? They go very well together but what if they are mixed?

As background, I’m Masha, a crafter, acrylic painter, and certified teacher and I love mixing colors and explaining them! 

Mixing pink and yellow paints makes peachy orange color, and shades of orange. The different shades of yellow and pink would give you various options for the shades of orange.

So here are some essential keys you might need to know as you go beyond and explore the fun and exciting color mixing between yellow and pink.

Read more about How To Mix Acrylic Paint? – Your Complete Color Mixing Guide

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Pink + yellow make?

On our painting color wheel, the yellow color is one of the primary colors.

Pink is not present in the color wheel because it’s just a lighter shade of red paint mixed with white paint. 

Both yellow and pink are warm colors.

If pink is made from red, and we know that mixing red and yellow will create a secondary color – orange, we can guess that pink and yellow will also make some orange shades.

And we won’t be wrong!

Mixing yellow and pink can indeed give you various shades of orange.

In my tests I’m using:

• Lemon Yellow
• Cadmium Yellow
• Quinacridone Rose
• Primary Magenta
• Hot Pink

Pink and yellow mixed can create an orange or peach color, depending on if you’ll use a lighter or darker shade of pink and yellow. 

Pink Shade	Yellow Shade	Mixed Color
Pink	Yellow	Peach
Quinacridone Rose	Lemon Yellow	Orange
Quinacridone Rose	Cadmium Yellow	Dark Orange
Hot Pink	Yellow	New York Pink
Primary Magenta	Lemon Yellow	Dark Orange
Primary Magenta	Cadmium Yellow	Vermilion

For instance, if you use a bright pink like magenta and mix it with a lemon yellow shade, you will get a bright red or orange color.

In printing, the CMYK color wheel has different primary colors (cyan, magenta, and yellow).

Magenta and yellow are used to create bright red and orange.

If you add more magenta you’ll get bright red and if you add more yellow then you’ll get a yellowish-orange color.

Read also: How to Make Magenta? My 2 Personal Methods

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Mixing Different Pink And Yellow Shades

Hot pink and yellow

Mixing hot pink and yellow will give you a pinky peach also known as New York pink paint.

If you want to get different shades of yellow and pink, you can mix them with a small amount of white, it’ll give you lighter shades of orange colors.

Light pink and yellow

If you use light pink like baby pink and cadmium yellow you might get a shade of vibrant orange color.

Though it still depends on how light shade you use, you’ll still get orange shades.

Some more mixing FAQ: Mix of Yellow and Purple: What These 2 Colors Make? Surprising results

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How to make darker shades or lighter tints of orange with yellow and pink?

You can add a little amount of white paint to make an orange tint, a lighter version of the orange color. You can also lighten an orange color by mixing an equal ratio of light pink and yellow.

Examples of these shades are baby pink and canary yellow.

You’ll get orange to yellow shades if you add more yellow to the mixture, while you’ll get peach to magenta if you add more pink.

On the other hand, you can add a touch of black (a tiny touch, if added too much it will turn muddy brown) paint to an orange color if you want to have darker versions or called shades.

Just be careful in adding black because it might ruin the color mixture.

Alternatively, to make a darker shade of orange, choose initially darker pink and yellow, or add a touch of raw umber.

I prefer this method over black.

Adding more yellow

As you can see you can easily achieve marigold yellow by adding more yellow to the mix, or even lighter shades. Here I added just a bit more yellow.

The more you add, the lighter and yellowy mix will be.

You can get a lighter orange shade depending on the amount of yellow you add to the mixture.

Adding more yellow will make the paint lighter to the point you will get shades of yellow such as the following:

• marigold
• lemon yellow
• Tuscan sun

Adding more pink

Adding more pink paint can eventually give you a bright red.

If the pink mixture has more red than white, it’ll give a strong pink shade and will overpower the color of yellow when mixed, so it’ll create a strong shade of orange.

Depending on the shade of yellow and pink it will become brighter, more salmon pink, or more red. I’m adding more pink on the right side of the swatch.

You can also get other shades like the following: 

• strawberry
• coral
• peach
• pink punch

Popular orange hues

These are the popular orange tints and shades that are commonly used in paintings or art crafts: 

• tangerine
• apricot
• pumpkin
• coral
• burnt orange
• carrot orange
• fire 
• orange ochre

Apart from these, there are still tons of orange shades that you can choose from.

Read also: What Color does Orange and Blue make?

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Orange color Psychology

Every color has different shades, similar to mixing yellow and pink paint. Depending on how dark and light the colors yellow and pink you use, you can get an entirely different orange hue that gives various meanings.

As such here are the different shades of orange hue which hold different meanings:

Pinkish orange hues	Yellowish-orange hues	Dark orange hues	Reddish orange hues
light colors give a soothing feeling friendliness good health	happiness optimism enthusiasm adventure excitement	deceit distrust timidity	domination pleasure passion desire

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How You Can Use Peach Orange Color in Painting

Shades of orange are used to create skin tones.

With different hues, you can create skin tone shades such as blush and peach, which you can use for pinkish skin tones.

Through orange tint, most artists used it to create other skin tones such as light brown shade.

Orange paint is commonly used in nature paintings such as sunsets, autumn leaves, and orange-colored gemstones. 

You will also use tons of orange if you paint giraffes with your kids 🙂 I have 15 Great Easy Giraffe Painting Tutorials for All Levels to Try.

If you don’t have yellow and pink paint with you, it’s still possible to create an orange shade by mixing an equal amount of red and yellow shades like alizarin crimson and cadmium yellow where you can get a true color orange. 

If you reach yellowish-orange shades, adding white will give you the base skin tone that you desire.

You can check out our other post about different techniques for acrylic painting. For painting mediums, I recommend Liquitex products.

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Wrap Up

The vibrant hue of yellow and pink when mixed creates various shades from peach to orange color.

Depending on the shades you’ll use, you can get indefinite shades by mixing yellow and pink.

Which color you mix with yellow and pink: was it more orange or peach?