Teal is a blue-green, so the textbook answer is blue plus green, or blue plus a little yellow. The textbook is right, and yet plenty of painters follow it and end up with a muddy grey-green. Usually the problem is the blue. Ultramarine, the blue in most starter sets, leans violet. Mix it towards green and you pass through grey on the way. Getting a clean teal needs a blue that already leans green: cerulean, phthalo blue, or a green like viridian that can be pushed blue.
Three teals, five palettes
I gave Halftint's engine three teal targets and asked it for the closest mix from each of five common palettes. The pair of chips in each cell is the target beside the closest the palette gets; the number is the distance in OKLab units times 100. Under 3 reads as a match. Above 6 or so, you would call it a different colour.
| Target | Impressionist | Split-primary | Six-tube beginner | Earth | Zorn |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ΔE 2.4 | ΔE 3.6 | ΔE 5.2 | ΔE 9.4 | ΔE 9.4 |
| ΔE 0.7 | ΔE 1.6 | ΔE 2.8 | ΔE 6.9 | ΔE 6.9 |
| ΔE 1 | ΔE 5 | ΔE 4.4 | ΔE 9.7 | ΔE 8.5 |
The pattern tells the story. The Impressionist palette, which carries viridian, gets all three. The split-primary palette, with phthalo blue, gets the two darker teals and struggles with the light one. The six-tube beginner set (ultramarine as the only blue) is a shade short on every one. The earth and Zorn palettes are not close, and the ΔE 9.4 on the first row is why: no combination of ochre, red, black and white gets anywhere near a saturated blue-green.
The recipes that work
Deep teal, Impressionist palette
ΔE 1.1- 4 parts Viridian
- 1 part Titanium White
- 2 parts Ultramarine Blue
Target on the left, the colour these parts make on the right. Add in the order listed, strongest pigment last.
Deep teal, split-primary palette
ΔE 1.6- 4 parts Titanium White
- 4 parts Cadmium Yellow Light
- 7 parts Phthalo Blue (GS) strong tinter
Target on the left, the colour these parts make on the right. Add in the order listed, strongest pigment last.
Light teal, Impressionist palette
ΔE 1.1- 6 parts Viridian
- 5 parts Titanium White
- 2 parts Ultramarine Blue
Target on the left, the colour these parts make on the right. Add in the order listed, strongest pigment last.
Read the split-primary recipe carefully: it is mostly white and yellow with the phthalo added last. Phthalo blue has about twice the tinting strength of an average tube, so it goes in by the speck. Start from the pile of phthalo and you will use half a tube of white trying to lighten it.
The one tube that changes everything
If teals matter to what you paint (water, glazed pottery, tropical foliage, a lot of textiles), one tube of cerulean blue does more than any amount of mixing skill. With cerulean, viridian and white available, all three targets are reachable almost exactly:
- teal: 9 cerulean blue · 2 cadmium yellow light · 1 titanium white (ΔE 0.2)
- deep teal: 8 viridian · 6 cerulean blue · 1 titanium white (ΔE 0.1)
- light teal: 6 viridian · 5 titanium white · 4 cerulean blue (ΔE 0)
This is the general lesson behind the specific colour. A palette has a shape, and some colours are outside it at any ratio. The palette pages draw that shape for four classic sets, and for each one list the saturated targets it cannot reach together with the single tube that would fix each. For your own rack, the app draws it on the wheel.