Claude Monet famously said “Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.”

If you’ve ever felt this way trying to pick the right hue for your new toolbar or call-to-action button, you’re not alone. We’ve already discussed the basics of choosing colors for your website, so you know there’s more to it than just picking your favourite shades. Color is a science.

But let’s dive deeper. Elements like contrast and gradients often come into play when searching for the right palette. Fortunately, we’ve done the research and found the best tools to help you create the perfect collection of colors for your website - without opening your wallet.

Start Color Scheming!

So you’ve got a color that you really want to use. The next step is to find other colors that will work to complement it, setting the right tone for your website. Here are three color scheme generators that you can put to work to help you find the perfect match:

Colordot

Colordot has a fun, simple, color scheme builder that allows you to customize swatches and see how they look together. Once you find a color you like, it provides the RGB value. You can alter it if you like.

Colorcode

ColorCode is a little more interactive and allows for more scheme building based on applying color rules to your chosen hue. It also lets you download your schemes easily on the toolbar as SCSS or PNG file types, with permalink options.

Coolors

Coolors lets you take colors from images with a quick drag and drop. If there’s a graphic or photo you’ve chosen, the app quickly lets you see what colors will work with it in your design.

Canva

Canva's color tool goes the extra mile, starting with a wiki-style collection of all available colors you can use in your designs. You get access to a detailed history of the color, its meaning, equivalent hex codes and can explore thousands of color combinations.

Spinning the Color Wheel

Across the visual spectrum, there are colors that work well together and others that are less compatible, to say the least. Ever try acid green and yellow together?

A color wheel is a spectacular tool for understanding color relationships. Whether you’re aiming for an analogous group or a custom collection of hues, these color wheel tools will let you piece together the perfect palette.

Adobe Color CC

Adobe has a quality color wheel tool that works with various color rules, plus a custom option. It saves the different hex and RGB codes, and can also create a wheel based off a previously chosen image.

Paletton

Paletton lets you customize a full color palette based off its wheel, with different options for color rules and styles. It also has a unique randomize option, for the adventurous.

Inspire Your Selection

Having a hard time getting ideas or just curious about how others have handled color choice? Take a look at these resources to generate the creative spark.

Dribbble

Chances are, you have already heard about the next tool in our roster... Dribbble has a unique fount of interesting images and art pieces. Viewers can browse by color code using a special search function. This tool is loved far and wide by professional designers and amateurs alike!

Khroma

Khroma creates a personalized color algorithm for you to work with. The site asks you to choose 50 colors out of thousands of hues to ensure that the generated combinations work perfectly.

Colorspace

ColorSpace has a gradient feature that shows gradual change between two tones of your choosing. The site also offers full and random palettes based off of a single color choice.

Keep Your Words Readable

The perfect colors for your site won’t mean much if no one can read your text. These resources will make sure your content visible to readers and that your messages are legible within your chosen palette.

Material Design

Material Design has a color tool that allows you to measure the accessibility and legibility of your chosen color combination. It offers recommended opacity and warns you when text will be impossible to read.

Colorsafe

Colorsafe allows for accessible color palettes based on Web Accessibility guidelines and contrast ratios. It’s easy to use and generates a recommended series of color palettes for fonts based on a chosen background hue.

Have Fun With It!

Coming up with the perfect colors for your site doesn’t have to be an unpleasant experience. With the help of color schemes and wheels, you can have fun trying out new, complementary hues that will customize your site.

There’s no single way to choose a palette, so give the tools a try and feel free to get carried away! Remember to ensure readability with the colors you pick, and if you get stuck, don’t be afraid to look around for inspiration.

The world is full of colorful ideas that will embolden you to make your site into a work of art that really reflects your own brand and style.

Explore the endless possibilities of color using your favourite color tools with PageCloud’s website builder. Don't see the tool you like best? Tell us in the comments!