Colour Scheme Sites…
Color, colour however you spell it, I’m guessing that at one time or another you’ve been stuck for inspiration with a new layout? We have all sat with Photoshop/Illustrator/Paint Shop Pro etc open and a great idea in our mind for a new venture, only to be stuck there picking swatch colours and moving the sliders around with no real idea of what to choose. Anything you pick feels ‘too normal’, or ‘everyone uses it.’ Well that is where this entry comes in to help - I have compiled a list of my favorite colour/color scheme websites for you to browse at your leisure. There’s quite a few out there… So here we go:
First of all, the old favorite. ColourLovers.com - I find this a little slow at times, and a bit crazy to use. It can feel like there is so much to look at on one page: a little cluttered if you will. However the pages on website and magazine trends are always handy for picking colours, and for seeing what’s in fashion this month. The tabbed navigation at the top can be a little irritating at times, as when I am dragging my curser over to a link it might flip to another topic if you’re not careful. This still remains to be one of my favorite sites.
Color Schemer Online allows you to either pick a colour or enter a hex value and using a sort of wheel method, it chooses matching colours for you. A little basic, but gets the job done. A tutorial on how to use this site is here, or try this: Color Schemer Schemes.
Another of my favorites is Color Hunter. This works by inputting a photograph and the color hunter chooses a scheme for you, based on the photo. I’ve never done this as there are plenty of schemes on there already to look at. I like to choose a category, for example, ‘vintage’ and then find a scheme I am happy with.
Lastly, we have Color Combos. I prefer to browse the library, and choose by tag name. There seems to be a lot of ads to scroll down past, but then there are a lot of combinations to choose from under those ads. There are lots and lots of helpful articles to browse here to.
Related: Twisted Barfly - Picking Colour Schemes For Your Site.
Posted By Carly On: Thursday 25th October, 2007
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9 Comments On: Colour Scheme Sites… »
Well, thank you for your post. I’ve found useful links. I’m often having problems picking my colour scheme. I find it so difficult sometimes, and colour has a lot to do when making a layout “successful” or not.
Thanks for the tips
They look like great sites, I’ll definitely check them out when I’m designing my new lay 
hey I had a lot of fun checking some of the websites I didn’t already know.
What bugs me is that most of these website show combos with axactly the same amount of each color. It’s never like that in a website.
You mean there’s equal blocks of size? A cool idea for a new colour site would be to pick say, 5 colours and have one base colour, one highlight colour etc etc you know, schemes you can actually USE for your website.
Sites such as ColourLovers are actually aimed at all types of media though, not just websites.
yes, that’s what I mean, equal blocks. Sorry my English is not perfect.
The website you suggest would be ultimate cool, great for designers!
Thanks for the tips! I will use them in the future.
Actually it would be very nice if you could resize the colour-blocks yourself…it is only a bit of javascript trickery, so it shouldn’t be too hard. If it is done in flash it would be even easier.
^ yeah, that’s an even better idea. Someone should email the owners of these sites!
Nice detailed post Carlster!
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