Choosing the right colour scheme can be a pain

• February 28, 2007 by dave
• 0 comments

I have to admit, choosing well balanced, web safe colours for projects is not my strong point.  Even for those who do it often will no doubt admit it can take time, time you would prefer to spend doing something else.  You can imagine my joy when I found resources on the net for assisting the colour choosing process. I have used a few sites and these are my favourite ones:

1. Colorblender - This site was given a 5* award by Practical Web Design. Colour blends can be downloaded as a small file that can be imported into Adobe Photoshop. If you visit the site click on the ‘Browse Blends’ link to see colour blends that others have saved.
2. Both Color Scheme and Color Scheme 2are very useful for deciding colour schemes.  Both of them allow you to select the different accessibility rules to see how how vision can affect the way colours are seen.  Color Scheme 2 has the additional feature of being able to select different colour schemes e.g. Monochromatic, contrast, traide etc.  Displaying the nearest web-safe alternative to the colours selected is an option.
3. HTML color code tool is based on classic color theory pioneered 1900s. The wheel uses yellow, red and blue as its primary colors.

There have been times when I have not wanted to use an interactive colour designer, I have found the colour charts on Lynda very useful.



The charts are listed by either hue or value.

While I was searching the net (which you may have noticed I do fairly often) recently if came across econsultant. At the time of writing they list 29 Online colour tools, some of those I have mentioned above are included in the list.  There are many more other colour tools which are well worth a look.

Using the right colours is critical for successful design projects and hopefully these resources will help you as much as they have helped me. 

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