5 Tools to Help You Choose a Colour Palette

5 Tools to Help You Choose a Colour Palette

Choosing your company colours is an essential part of branding. We recommend some online tools that will help you select your perfect colour palette.

Branding is one of many essential steps for small businesses and, with that, choosing the colours which will be associated with that brand. While it might not appear to be critical on the surface, colours play an influential role in the way people may perceive your brand.

Before deciding on just any colour, you need to know what kind of emotion you wish to convey to your target customers; the colour of your brand will be a powerful tool for this. It will also be a part of your core colours for your website.

Decide on your core colours.

Before you begin mixing and matching colour combinations and palettes, it would be useful to research what each colour represents and take your search from there. This will majorly narrow down which colours to research, such as looking primarily at blue and green combinations. Otherwise, you may end up losing yourself in all the choices, running the risk of continuous mind-changes. You will have plenty of choice in simply narrowing down which shade of that colour-group is perfect for your brand. Narrow your core, or ‘dominant’, colours down to two.

Choose an accent colour.

The accent colour aims to highlight or draw attention to features on your website you don’t want visitors to miss. These are essential and don’t want to be rushed in the decision-making process. You can have more than one accent colour but, for simplicity, one is enough, to begin with. Ideally, this colour wants to complement your core colours, or contrast them in a successful contrast; whichever you decide, the colour is usually bolder than the dominant colours you have chosen.

Research colour palettes.

1. Coolers.

Coolers is a clean and easy-to-navigate site which will help you to generate complete colour palettes as well as showing off the latest palette trends. If you choose to generate a unique palette, you will be taken through a step-by-step tutorial enabling you to use the useful tools it has to offer.

This site has a unique way of generating the colour palettes, presenting each colour side-by-side, and allowing you to lock-in a particular colour you like. Once this colour is locked in, you can then continue to generate new colours for the rest of the palette until you have filled it with colours you have chosen. This is a particularly innovative way of allowing you autonomy over your colours without losing your favourites while simultaneously seeing how they work in conjunction.

2. Color Hex.

This is a very useful tool particularly if you require a complete breakdown of information for your chosen colours. You can find inspiration for potential colour palettes from what other users have shared on the site, which may help you to find your own.

One great feature, in particular, is that colour-hex also provides complementary colours, combinations, shades and more, giving you a wider view of the colour you’re choosing.It’s essential not to downplay the impact that colour associations will have on your brand, so taking the time to get it right the first time will pay off in the end. These five tools will make your search so much easier with the wealth of inspiration and palette-creation tools, and allow you more time for the important decisions.

3. Color Palettes.

Color Palettes is a great place to start if you’re looking for your initial inspiration. In many ways, it’s better to take some time and take a look through other people’s palettes so you can get a feel for which ones you become drawn to and the similarities between them.

These inspiration boards also allow you to share them to Pinterest, where you can easily compile your favourites to come back to. Each colour will also show the hex code, which gives you a direct shortcut to the colour you wish to use, even if you’re not looking to use the entire palette.

4. Color Hunt.

Color Hunt is much more on the simplistic side when presenting their palettes. They present those which are trending, new, popular or even show them at random. They have been created with designers and artists in mind. It’s a little more limited than the other colour tools, but in many ways, this could be a productive way of cutting out the noise and focusing exclusively on the colour combinations.

You are still able to create your own palette and will be shown ones recommended for you. If you’re after browsing simplicity, this is a good place to find it.

5. Cool PHP Tools.

This site offers a colour extract tool which is extremely useful if you have found the perfect blend of colours and no idea what their colour codes are. All you have to do is upload the picture into the tool and let it work its magic. It will then identify each colour and provide the closest code related to that colour.

You will also be given other options, such as how many colours you want, whether you want to reduce the brightness etc. Once it has generated the results, you will then have yourself a colour palette based on the compilation of colours within your uploaded picture.

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