One of the most important steps in creating a new website and a recognizable brand is choosing a good color palette. It’s very important to use a consistent color palette in your images, website, social media, promotional materials, and any other visuals you create.
Unfortunately, choosing the best color scheme can be quite a chore if you are new to picking colors for your brand and don’t know where to start. That’s why I’m going to share my favorite color palette resources that help me pick the best colors when I’m feeling uninspired or don’t have time to create custom color schemes.
Design Seeds
Every time I write about color palettes, I have to mention Design Seeds. This is probably my favorite color palette resource and I can spend hours browsing the website.
It has a large collection of color schemes based on photographs and you will easily find a color scheme that’s close to your perfect palette.
Adobe Color CC
Adobe Color CC, also known as Adobe Kuler, is a free app that you can use on your computer or mobile device.
You can add a hue you like or choose one using the color wheel, and get a matching palette using different color rules.
Another great thing about it is that you can upload a photo and it will generate a color scheme based on color mood. How great is that?
CSS Drive Colors Palette Generator
The Colors Palette Generator is the perfect tool to create a color scheme for your website. Just upload a photograph and it will provide you with an extended color palette. You can choose eight or more colors to use on your website.
As a web designer, I love the fact that it provides the Hex color code so I can add it right into the stylesheet of the website I’m working on.
Paletton
Paletton is similar to Adobe Color CC. You can pick your favorite color using the color wheel or paste the Hex code and it will generate a new palette. It also gives you varying shades of the selected tones so you can create a secondary color palette.
Coolors
Coolors is another free app that you can use on your computer or mobile device. It will randomly generate a color palette if you press the space bar or you can upload a photograph to create a custom color palette. There are also sliders so you can adjust the hue and saturation of the colors.
Another cool thing about it is that it will also generate color names so instead of #fca99b you can now say ‘light salmon pink’.
0 to 255
When you design a website, you might find that your favorite color is too light or too dark and it’s hard to read or just doesn’t stand out. 0 to 255 will help you find variations of any color so you won’t have to create a different color palette.
Have you used any of these sites? Do you have other color palette resources that you’d like to share?
Hello, I came across your blog via Pinterest, which everyone knows is the land of all knowledge and mason jar salads 🙂 I’ve had success selling custom digital goods on Fiverr and I want to branch out to Etsy and other platforms now that my confidence as a maker of digital things has increased. I remember when I first started, I would have a mild panic attack after submitting a final. I’m trying to learn and plan as much as I can before jumping in, so I really appreciate all the information on your blog. Thanks a lot!!
You’re welcome, Leslie! I’m so happy to hear that you find my posts helpful. Best of luck with your Etsy shop and please let me know if you need help with anything.
You should also try Creative Market. It’s harder to open a shop because you go through a review process, but it’s such a great platform.
Thank you so much, I have thought about CM, I love buying all the pretty design assets too. 🙂 Thanks again!