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There are many principles that make up a great web design, but one that is often overlooked is choosing the right mix of colours. It’s not only about what individual colours may mean but also what the mix together represents.
There are entire dissertations dedicated to the study of colour psychology, so it’s no wonder many marketers and designers alike reach a brick wall when trying to nail down colour choices.
Below, we’ve helped to pinpoint some leading tools to help you on the path to colour nirvana.
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1. Coolors
They describe themselves as the super fast color schemes generator for cool designers, and we’d see ourselves as part of that group! It offers a simple UI when adjusting colours similar to the Adobe Color CC design pattern, plus the ability to pick a single colour or generate an entire palette from an image. Photoshop and Illustrator extensions are a plus.
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2. Adobe Color CC
We’d be crazy if we didn’t include Adobe in the mix! Pros include direct integration with Adobe CC Libraries or exporting colours as a swatch exchange palette for use in your favourite Adobe software.
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3. Paletton
Paletton is a freaking awesome tool for web designers when trialling out colour palettes. It offers not only your base colours, but the light and dark tones related to each colour. Going to the examples tab will show you usage of your colour palette on an actual web page to make a light, dark, positive or negative design.
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4. Colour Lovers
Colours Lovers have a vast community driven catalogue of palette inspiration. There is great categorisation to whittle down your colour choices by things like home, fashion or even the latest wedding trends.
They go beyond the norm – their catalogue also showcases patterns, pattern templates and shapes.
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5. Colors pallete generator
The colors pallete generator from CSS Drive provides a fairly useful and unique feature – to generate a colour palette from an uploaded image. If you or your client has design inspiration from an existing design or image, then this is the tool for you. It’s colour mix from image upload is vaster than that provided by Coolors.
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6. Color Blender
Color Blender provides a quick way to get 5 suggested tones/matches from one base colour. You can get granular and change each colour if you’d like. Sending colours via email, or exporting for use in Photoshop and Illustrator is available.
It also presents a one click option to get a suggested Pantone match, which is helpful for outdoor printed media.
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Rounding up
Do you work with a trial and error approach, or apply a more scientific method? Do you work based on existing examples, or play it entirely by ear?
Whatever your approach, we’re sure that our power list of tools to help you test and find colour palettes will be what you need to get your next brand or web project off the ground!