5 Ways to Find a Colour Palette For Your Designs

Although I’m a big fan of very simple and minimalist design, sometimes you need to add some colour. A nice complimentary colour palette can make us feel warm and fuzzy and comfortable inside like a warm cup of coffee on Christmas morning. Or something. The bottom line is a good use of colour is important. But sometimes it’s hard to come up with a palette to use for your designs. Sometimes it just won’t click, but hey, we have the internet now! So there are things that can help.

Here are 5 ways to get a good colour palette going for your next design.

Kuler

Kuler is my favourite web application to use for finding colours. Not only are there lots of user-submitted colour palettes to choose from, but you can put a colour in and find complementary, compound, triad, monochromatic, analogous and shade-based swatches. You get your colour values outputted in HSV, RGB, CMYK, LAB, and Hexadecimal formats. Great resource.

COLOURlovers

First of all, mad respect to Colour Lovers for the proper spelling of the word colour in their title. Ha. Same idea as Kuler when it comes to user-submitted palettes; there are lots to choose from. On top of that you can find individual colours and patterns to use as well.

Colours from a Photo

Sometimes the best usage of colour can be found in real life. Have you ever seen a photograph that just works in terms of colour? Of course you have. There are now ways to extract colour information from images, so that you can reproduce that real-world awesomeness in your work. Check out What is its Color? , Degraeve Color Palette or CSS Drive Image Palette to upload an image you like and can get some nice colour values from it.

Colour Theory

There’s something to be said for a good understanding of design principles. Sometimes you don’t want to rely on a website to tell you what colours look nice together, but for that you’ll need to know some colour theory.

Here are some guides to get you started:
Color Theory on Wikipedia
Color Matters – Color Theory
Color Theory Tutorial by Worqx

There are also plenty of books out on colour theory, from the basics to more advanced ideas so check out Amazon or your local bookstore if this is the kind of thing that interests you.

Throw Caution to the Wind

When all else fails, do what you want. Sometimes you just have to get out there, mess around, and get dirty. Try some colour combinations and if you don’t like them, try something else. If you have an eye for it you’ll start getting to know what looks good together and what doesn’t. Practice makes perfect, my friend.

So those are my suggestions for finding colour combinations to use in your designs.

What do you do to find colour palettes?h3