Joan,
I will try to answer you briefly. (Ha!)
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I am a big proponent of destaurating colors by adding their complements and/or a neutral of either same or opposing temperatures, but more often the latter. As a result I can't recall a time where I didn't have need for a red-orange-yellow complements.
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I understand graying a color by adding its complement. But wouldn't there be just one complement, not a choice between a cool complement or a warm complement? Isn't the complement the color on the exact opposite of the color wheel? And what do you mean by a red-orange-yellow complement?
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By red-orange-yellow complements, I am speaking of complements to what I think of as the local color of skin - that is, some type of orange (varieties of either red-orange, orange, or yellow-orange); the corresponding complements would be either be blue-greens, blues or violets.
Yes, there would be only one true complement for any given color, and when mixed together will create a beautiful neutral gray.
Pure colors, though, can also be desaturated be adding neutrals, which is one of the advantages I see in using a palette similar to Daniel Greene's. When I mix up my daily palette (it's the same every day), I mix:
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warm neutral, consisting of Raw sienna (a color which is already desaturated)+ a little Ivory Black- and then several values of this color lightened with white;and
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a cool neutral, consisting of Grumbacher's Raw umber (cooler that other manufacterers' RU, and like any of the earth colors, is also already desaturated), and several values lightened with white.
Even the addition of my warm neutral to a mixed local skin color will have a desaturating effect. A cool neutral will desaturate the original color even more.
(Wow, I hope this explanation is understandable, it is sometimes so much easier to just show someone!)