Think about how active or warm or passive or cool your color associations are in the design process. Create a color palette connects to the feeling you want your site to convey. Color AssociationsĬolor is a great tool when it comes to emotion and feeling. To ensure success, pick one color as a dominant hue and use two accent colors. This is one of the least common methods for creating a color palette because colors can sometimes be difficult to balance with so many bright hues. Triad color outlines use three colors that are evenly spaced on the color wheel. When using this type of color palette, designers frequently opt to make one color more dominant in the design than the others. Think about the colors of a common houseplant for example, with green stems and lighter green (yellow-green) and yellow leaves. Analogous color schemes are popular because the color combinations often mirror colors seen together in nature. Analogous schemes can use two, three or even four adjoining hues to create a palette of balanced color. Split-complementary schemes are rather simple to create and have a more harmonious feel than a straight complementary color scheme.Īnalogous colors are located side-by-side on the color wheel. Some designers like to add a third color for accent purposes by implementing and split-complementary scheme, using one base color and two adjacent colors as accents. These color combinations also create feelings of stability. Complementary color schemes use opposing colors to create a great deal of contrast and impact. This applies to primary, secondary, tertiary colors and variants of each. Sticking to one of these three themes will almost guarantee a successful color palette.Ĭomplementary colors are those that are opposites on the color wheel. There are several basic types of color matching based on the color wheel. The color is located clockwise from the primary color it contains. The primary color name is first, followed by the secondary color. The names of tertiary colors are derived from a combination of the colors used to create them. Tertiary colors are formed by combining primary and secondary colors equally. Yellow-orange, red-orange, red-violet, blue-violet, blue-green and yellow-green are tertiary colors. Each secondary color falls between the primary colors used to create it on the color wheel. Secondary colors are formed when two primary colors are mixed in even amounts. Green, orange and violet (purple) are secondary colors. They, in essence, exist as a base for every other color. Conversely, no combinations of color can be used to create a primary color. All other colors are created by mixing combinations of these hues. Primary colors are the basis for the entire color spectrum. Colors are grouped in the same way, the difference is the inclusion of white, and subsequently tints, on the wheel. The expanded color wheel, which is the basis for most RGB color pickers in design software, is an extension of the basic wheel. The wheel is used from everything from choosing what color to paint a house to art to web design.
The basic wheel contains 12 colors – three primary colors, three secondary colors and six tertiary colors - in a logically arrange format. It is used by scientists, artists and designers to help understand and explain color and color pairings. The color wheel is a circle dating to the days of Sir Isaac Newton in the late 1600s.
Most commonly color is categorized using the color wheel, the most common platform for color theory. But we also use other methods as well as they relate to how color is being used – think about color names as CMYK, RGB or HEX values. The most common way we, as designers identify color is by name. Total absorption of wavelengths results in no color (black) while complete reflection results in white. Scientifically speaking, color is the visual presence of light in different wavelengths and relates to how these wavelengths are absorbed or reflected. That same tool that teachers used in school really is the basis for how designers plan and use color in almost every project from the simplest web page to expansive brands with multiple sites and campaigns. It all comes down to basic color theory and the color wheel. Selecting a color palette is one of them that can be tough if you don’t have the right tools. Sometimes the toughest step in building a new website or redesign can be the conceptual ones.