Choosing the right colors is a critical part of website design. Colors, textures, buttons all establish mood and ultimately create the organization’s visual essence online. There are certain colors we like – and others that we don’t. How color is used can evoke various emotions and affect the effectiveness of the website.
It’s a fine balance to choose the right color combination. Websites need contrast color to draw attention, yet maintain uniformity to communicate brand and theme. It’s no wonder there are many different online tools and websites dedicated to color theory and design tools. So where can you go to find the best tools?
Color Trends and Combinations
Finding the right color scheme and balance becomes easier when you visualize colors together and better yet, when you can see a visual image of those colors in action.
Whether you are designing a new marketing campaign, looking at trending colors, or if you want to research interesting color combinations to make your marketing stand out, here are a few tools that will help you get started.
Adobe Kuler Tool
Adobe Kuler is a great place to start looking for color combinations. Not only can you see what is popular and trendy by browsing the most recent color combinations added to their library, you can quickly create an account and go into the theme you like and begin changing the colors to create your own unique color palette.
The strength of this website is its community of designers and color enthusiasts. Color trends can be found by looking through the most popular and highest rated palettes.
Color Scheme Designer
This is a fun tool to see what colors can be paired together. Start with a single color and click the option buttons above the color wheel to find complementary and accent colors. It can even show you how your colors could look within a mockup design.
Design Seeds
Design Seeds is a blog that is serious about color. Her blog posts are simple and each post is accompanied by visually stunning photography as part of a carefully designed color palette. For visual people who need to see colors in action, this is the place to go.
With so much at stake, its worth the time to do a little bit of research to make sure the colors you choose reflect the right tone and balance and best expresses your brand.