3. Saturation

This month, we delve further into the three elements of colour – hue, saturation, and tone – with a closer look at the second of those. Saturation describes the intensity of a colour’s hue, from intense (or saturated) to dull (or desaturated). While a saturated colour displays the fullest properties of its hue – imagine the green of freshly-watered grass or the yellow of a ripe lemon – a fully desaturated colour appears “neutral”, a grey, black or white that has no hue whatsoever and displays purely tonal characteristics.