Visual processing game · Grades 1–13
Colour Mixer Lab: Free Colour Mixing Game for Kids
Colour Mixer Lab is a free colour mixing game. Add paint drops until your colour matches the target perfectly, then move on to printing inks and coloured light. Every play gives a fresh colour to match.
Part of our 24 brain games for kids, free with an account.
What Colour Mixer Lab trains
Colour Mixer Lab trains colour judgement (seeing small differences in hue, lightness and brightness, then deciding what to change) and ratio thinking: 2 yellow for every 1 blue makes the same colour as 4 to 2. Children also learn how paint, ink and light mix differently.
What the research says: Like any brain game, Colour Mixer Lab builds the skills it practises, here careful colour judgement and trial and improvement, rather than general intelligence (Simons et al., 2016).
Who Colour Mixer Lab is for
Colour Mixer Lab suits Grades 1–13, with 8 stages per level. Starter (Grades 1–3) uses red, yellow, blue and white. Explorer (4–6) adds black, tints, shades and ratio cards. Challenger (7–9) uses cyan, magenta and yellow printing inks and scaling a ratio to an exact batch. Expert (10–13) mixes red, green and blue light and hex colour codes.
How to play Colour Mixer Lab
- Look at the target colour.
- Add drops of paint, ink or light to your mix.
- Press Check to see how close you are as a percentage.
- Adjust: lighter or darker? Redder or bluer?
- Match the target to pass the stage.
Tips for parents and teachers
Ask “Is yours lighter or darker? Redder or bluer?” before they add a drop. Praise a first-time match more than speed. Two or three stages, or one level, is a good sitting. Pots are labelled and the match is shown as a number, so the game still works for children who see some colours differently.
FAQs
What age is Colour Mixer Lab for?
Grades 1–13, roughly ages 6 to 18. Young children mix primary colours; older students mix light and work with hex codes.
What curriculum topics does it cover?
Colour in art and design, ratio and proportion in maths, light and colour in science, and hex colour codes in computer science.
Is Colour Mixer Lab colour-blind friendly?
Pots are labelled and the match is shown as a number, so children who see some colours differently can still play.
How is the match scored?
With the CIEDE2000 colour-difference formula, a standard way of measuring how different two colours look to the human eye.