2 Easy Ways To Make A Mustard Color With Acrylics Or Oils Step By Step

Written by Fay in Acrylic Painting

There are a few different ways to mix mustard. Here I have chosen a simple method and given some alternative colors that can be used.

To make mustard you can mix Yellow ochre, Cadmium & cadmium yellow deep, and ultramarine blue.

For this color mix, I have used the English mustard color as a guide. Then both lightened and darkened the mix to make a range of colors that should suit most people’s needs. Both methods work well to create a mustard color.

1. How To Make Mustard Yellow With Primary Colors Only

Colors used for the first mustard mix:

  • Ultramarine blue
  • cadmium yellow
  • Cadmium Red

To make brown using these 3 primary colors first mix a mid-range brown. You can see the general quantities of each color on the right.

Mix your brown until it looks about the same as below.

Now add yellow to lighten up the brown to the color you want. It’s easier to pull the colors away from the main color and mix them into the yellow color.

Add as much yellow as you need to create the color you want. You can see below I have created a range of colors. The 2nd one from the bottom is the nearest color for me. Note the colors do look slightly different on screen.

This Is The Finished Color Chart For Mustard Made From Primary Colors

This chart is the colors made from ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow, and cadmium red. The square on the right is the color taken from actual mustard.

2. How to Mix a Mustard Color Using Oils or Acrylics

To mix mustard you need the following colors:

  • Ultramarine blue
  • Yellow Ochre
  • cadmium yellow
  • Cadmium yellow deep or diarylamide/diarylide yellow
  • Titanium white (optional)

Don’t worry if you don’t have these exact colors. Most of you will as most of them are the standard palette colors. If not you can use a medium yellow/Hansa yellow without green undertones, and a mid blue. If you don’t have yellow ochre just mix a brownish yellow.

  1. Mix together the yellow and the deep yellow to make a mid-orange.

2. Now add the Yellow Ochre to that mix. Ad a small amount at a time until it’s as dark as you want it.

3. This should give you a color near to English mustard. If this isn’t dark enough below I darken the mix using blue.

To Lighten The Mix

If you want to lighten the color you can add either yellow or white. Here I have added white. You can see how it changes the color slightly.

To Darken The Mustard Mix

If you want to tone it down add a tiny amount of blue to the original non-whitened mix. This dulls the color slightly and takes the edge off of it and creates a slightly greener undertone. Some may feel this is more mustard-like than without the blue

The more blue color you add the darker the color as you can see from the top color here.

Finished Dried Color Chart For Mustard

This is the finished color chart for the 2nd mix. The square on the right is the color taken from actual mustard.

Other Questions People Often Ask

What Color is Mustard Yellow?

Mustard is a deep yellow with slightly green undertones.

Does brown and yellow make mustard?

You can mix a color to resemble mustard from brown and yellow. The success will depend on which brown and yellow you use. Brown is essentially just the 3 primaries mixed together and then lightened with a yellow which are in the colors I have used above. Although I didn’t use red there is an element of red in the yellow ochre and my yellow deep is more orange than yellow.

How do you make mustard darker?

For my mixes above I have added blue to make the mustard color darker.

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