Vol 1 vs Vol 2

What Vol 1 is

A Dictionary of Color Combinations is the book people mean when they say "Wada". Sanzo Wada — painter, teacher, and costume designer who won an Academy Award for Gate of Hell — compiled it in 1933 as a working reference for designers. It holds 348 combinations of two, three and four colors, printed as flat plates with no explanation attached. Seigensha brought it back into print in 2010 after decades of scarcity.

Its influence is out of proportion to its size: it is the reason a particular muted, warm palette keeps reappearing in contemporary design. We analysed all 348 plates and found that 92% of them are warm-anchored — red alone accounts for almost half.

What Vol 2 is

Vol 2 is not an expanded edition of Vol 1. It gathers the work Wada published between 1935 and 1938: 72 plates built around the Japanese seasons, and 165 drawn from the fashion, interior and graphic design of the period — 237 in total, none of them in Vol 1.

It is also the harder book to find secondhand, and the one most likely to show you something you have not seen before if you have spent time with the classic set.

The honest difference

Most comparisons of these two books stop at "Vol 2 has more plates". The difference that actually matters when you are deciding what to spend money on is this: you can read all of Vol 1 here for free. Every one of its 348 combinations is on this site with copyable hex values.

So for Vol 1, the book is worth buying for the object — the printed color, the paper, the binding — not for access to the data. For Vol 2 the calculation is different: those 237 plates are not in this archive, so the book is the only practical way to see them.

Which should you buy?

You have never used Wada before → Vol 1. It is the canonical set, the one every other reference cites. Browse it free here first; buy it if you find yourself returning.

You already own or know Vol 1 → Vol 2, comfortably. It is genuinely new material rather than a reissue, and it is the volume this archive cannot substitute for.

You want to understand why combinations work, not just collect them → neither, yet. Read Albers's Interaction of Color first — it teaches the mechanism. Wada gives you the answers; Albers explains them.

You know you want both → Seigensha publishes them as a two-volume set that also includes the Japanese Traditional Colors chart — the same two books plus the traditional-color reference, in one order rather than two.

Where Interaction of Color fits

Josef Albers's Interaction of Color (Yale University Press, 50th Anniversary Edition) is the third book designers pair with these. It is instructional rather than referential: it demonstrates how the same color appears to change depending on what surrounds it. If Wada is a dictionary, Albers is the grammar. Owning both is common, and they are rarely substitutes for one another.

Questions, answered

What is the difference between Dictionary of Color Combinations Vol 1 and Vol 2?

Vol 1 reproduces Sanzo Wada's 1933 work — 348 color combinations, the set most people mean when they cite "Wada". Vol 2 collects his 1935–1938 follow-ups: 72 plates on the Japanese seasons and 165 drawn from early-century fashion, interior and graphic design, 237 in total. The two books do not overlap.

Which volume should I buy first?

If you have never used Wada, start with Vol 1 — it is the canonical set and the one every reference points to. If you already know Vol 1, Vol 2 is the better purchase, because its 237 plates are not reproduced in this archive or in most online sources.

Do I need to buy the book if the combinations are online?

No — and we would rather say so. All 348 Vol 1 combinations are browsable free on this site, with hex values you can copy. Buy the book if you want the object: Japanese binding, matte stock, and the plates printed rather than backlit. Vol 2 is the different case: its plates are not in this archive, so the book is the only practical way to see them.

Is Interaction of Color the same kind of book?

No. Wada's dictionaries are reference — combinations to pull from. Josef Albers's Interaction of Color is instructional: it teaches how colors change each other depending on what sits nearby. They complement rather than compete, which is why designers often own both.

Are these books in English?

The Wada volumes are Japanese imports published by Seigensha. They are plate books — the value is in the printed color, and captions are minimal — so the language barrier is small in practice. Interaction of Color is in English (Yale University Press).