The short answer: copper is a red-orange, and the reliable base is burnt sienna warmed with a red. Add cadmium yellow or orange and a touch of white for the highlights, and burnt umber or a little ultramarine blue for the shadows. The rest of this article covers why that works and how to make the result actually read as metal rather than as brown paint.
What color copper actually is
Copper is a soft metal with a reddish-brown surface. It sits between red and orange on the color wheel, closer to orange than most people expect, and it is warmer and lighter than the brown most of us reach for first.
The physics is worth knowing because it explains the shadows. Copper absorbs blue-green light and reflects red-orange, which is what gives it its color. It also means the complementary of copper is blue-green, and that is exactly what you see reflected in its shadow areas.
Polished copper is also a mirror. A copper kettle is not one flat color — it carries the whole room in it, stretched and distorted. That is the single most useful thing to understand before mixing anything.
The base mix
Start with burnt sienna. On its own it is already close, which is why it is the standard starting point rather than a mix of primaries.
From there:
- Base copper: burnt sienna with a little cadmium red light. Adjust the red until it looks like a penny rather than like earth.
- Warmer, brighter copper: add cadmium orange, or cadmium yellow if you want it to lean gold.
- Darker copper: add burnt umber. It darkens without cooling the mix down.
- Deeper, cooler copper: a small amount of ultramarine blue. Add it sparingly — blue and orange are opposites, so a little turns the mix to a neutral brown very quickly.
If you are working from a limited palette without burnt sienna, you can build a workable version from red, yellow and a small amount of blue: mix the red and yellow to a deep orange first, then knock it back with the smallest touch of blue until it stops looking like orange and starts looking like metal. Our guide to the color wheel covers why that third color does the work.
Highlights
Mix cadmium red with cadmium yellow or cadmium orange for the bright, lit face of the metal. Add white to lift it, but do it in stages — white cools and chalks a warm mix faster than you expect, and too much of it turns copper into salmon pink.
For the brightest points, where the light source is reflecting directly, go almost to pure white with the barest warmth in it. On real copper these highlights are small, hard-edged and much brighter than everything around them.
Shadows, and the part that catches people out
The instinct is to darken copper with more brown and more orange. That is what makes painted copper look like wood.
Shadows on copper tend toward blue-green, not toward darker orange. Because the surface reflects its surroundings and absorbs blue-green light, the darker planes pick up cool tones. Start shadows with burnt sienna and raw umber, and for the darkest areas mix burnt sienna with ultramarine blue and, if needed, a touch of ivory black.
Getting those cool shadows in is what separates a copper kettle from a brown one.
Making it look like metal
Here is the thing most mixing guides leave out: metal does not read as metal because of the pigment. It reads as metal because of the contrast and the edges.
A matte object shades gradually from light to dark. A polished one jumps — a near-white highlight sitting right next to a dark reflection, with almost no transition between them. If you paint copper with soft, even gradients you will get an orange-brown shape no matter how well you mixed the color.
Three things to do:
- Push the range wider than looks right. Lighter lights, darker darks.
- Keep the transitions between them tight rather than blended.
- Let the reflections be the wrong color. A copper pot in a green kitchen has green in it.
Metallic acrylic paints exist and contain real mica or metal flake, which gives a genuine sheen a mixed color cannot. They are worth having if you paint a lot of metal, but a well-observed mixed copper beats a flat metallic straight from the tube almost every time.
Colors that go with copper
Copper's complementary is blue-green, so teal, sapphire and emerald all sit well against it and make it look brighter by contrast. It also works with the natural neutrals — wood, cream, black, unbleached linen — and with its metal relatives, silver and gold.
If you want copper to recede rather than stand out, put it against warm neutrals. If you want it to sing, put something cool and dark behind it.
Common questions
How do you make acrylic paint look like copper?
Burnt sienna plus cadmium red light for the base, cadmium red with yellow or orange for the highlights, and burnt sienna with ultramarine blue for the darkest shadows. Then widen the contrast, as described above.
What color stands out against copper?
Green and blue-green. They are copper's complementary colors, which is why copper cookware looks so good against a green or teal wall.
Is copper an orange color?
Copper is red-orange. It absorbs blue-green light and reflects the red-orange, which is what you see.
How do you tell copper from brass?
Copper is reddish-brown, close to the color of a penny. Brass is distinctly yellow or orange-yellow. If it looks golden rather than rosy, it is brass.
How do you protect a finished copper-colored painting?
A clear acrylic varnish over the dry paint keeps the color from dulling and protects the surface. Let the painting cure fully first — a few days rather than a few hours.
To sum up
Copper is burnt sienna and red, lifted with yellow and white for the highlights and cooled with blue for the shadows. Mix it a little warmer and a little lighter than seems right, keep the contrast wide and the edges hard, and let the reflected colors in.
If you would rather not mix at all, the paints in a paint by numbers kit come premixed to the design, so the copper on a lantern or a kettle is already matched for you. You can see the Ledgebay designs in the shop, or browse the customer gallery to see finished ones.
