Reputation: 10562

Choosing colour schemes

How do you choose your colour schemes for your applications and/or web designs?

Is it a gut instinct thing or can logic be applied here too? I have looked at some colour theory but my combinations seemed wrong.

I am looking at a monochrome webpage. Rather than pluck colours out of the air as usual I would like to see if there is a science behind this. Links and opinions welcome.

Upvotes: 2

Answers (9)

buba

Reputation: 113

Another alternative is colorcombos.com, which can grab colors from any website. You can browse its library for different combinations or try to change them, then make yours.

Upvotes: 1

themis

Reputation: 1077

Your public library should have a copy of the book Color Index which contains various color combinations which work harmoniously. Also, you could look into purchasing a Color Wheel from your local art supply store. It's not expensive, it lets you play with mono, complementary, triad and tetrad schemes. The Color Scheme Designer site is also very nice.

Upvotes: 1

Matt Breckon

Reputation: 3374

I bought a designers/printers reference book that contains pre-defined sets of colours and tones. It includes the RGB values for the colours so I can put them directly into my apps.

The book contains sets such as "contemporary", "autumn", "winter", "cool modern".

Upvotes: 1

Nifle

Reputation: 11923

Usually I'm told what to use.
If I'm not and have a logo or an image and use this Colors Palette Generator it lets you upload an image and then gives you a generated colour scheme.

If nether I borrow something from around the web.

Upvotes: 1

Victor

Reputation: 23922

Colourlovers: http://www.colourlovers.com/

Or just look around. Go around your town with a camera, take random pictures and pick colours. Good places are the fruit section of a market, park, etc.

Upvotes: 2

Matt Briggs

Reputation: 42158

To be totally honest, I usually rip off someone elses color scheme for my own personal stuff (for work stuff, hire a designer). I will grab the main color and complimentary color from a site I think looks nice, plug those into one of the hundreds of online color tools out there, and build out a pallet. Once I have the colors down, I will do a few subtle gradients in photoshop, and just sort of go from there.

Upvotes: 2