8 Must-Know Colour Websites for Designers: The Honest List
As a designer, having access to a wide range of quality colour resources can greatly enhance your creative process. While there are countless colour websites out there, it gets very hard to identify those that truly offer value and reliability.
This article is not about overwhelming you with an exhaustive list of colour websites, but rather providing you with my carefully curated selection of must-know colour resources that are both effective & trustworthy and my personal source of inspiration.
By focusing on quality over quantity, you can be sure that the colour websites presented here will be valuable assets in your design toolkit.
Sharing the same principles I’ve also made two other articles, about Must-have font resources and Illustrations you should check out.
Before you start bookmarking these must-know colour websites, let’s begin with a (very) brief introduction to colour theory.
Why is important to know about colour theory?
Now more than ever you can generate the most amazing colour palettes in a matter of seconds. However, why sometimes when we apply them in our projects something still feel a bit off-place?
Well… I think you guessed the answer
Understanding colour theory the basics of colour theory is crucial for effectively using colour in various design fields such as graphic design, illustration, painting, interior design, typography, and more. By grasping the basics you can employ them more strategically to develop effective results.
The outcome of this understanding is the ability to evoke specific emotions, vibes, or aesthetics. Although there are several tools available to help even the most non-artistic individuals create engaging designs, graphic design requires more extensive knowledge of design elements.
For instance, choosing the appropriate colour combination may seem simple initially, but when faced with a colour wheel, one would wish for more information about what they’re looking at.
There are numerous websites and books fully dedicated to teaching colour theory and how to use the colour wheel and how to build colour schemes.
My aim of this article is to expedite this process by presuming that you, the reader, are already familiar with this information and require a quick source of inspiration for your composition.
Now, get your bookmarks ready!
1- Coolors.co
By far my favourite website. The interface is beautiful and it’s very user-friendly.
The free version offers a lot of things such as a palette generator (with up to 10 colours), uploading images and extracting the colour palette, editing shades, browsing gradients, browse colours by names and it’s also available on iOS and Android app, Figma, Chrome and Adobe extension.
2- Color Hunt
Carefully curated, this website is an open source of colour palettes you can search by their pre-selected categories or via their search bar. The minimalistic design makes it very easy and quick to use. They also have a Google Chrome extension.
3- Paletton.com
Upon first glance, the interface may appear slightly rougher than others, but it provides immediate access to the colour wheel with different colour scheme modes. The website also offers a layout that can be simulated in dark, white, positive, and negative modes to preview your palette. However, the standout feature is the vision simulation tab, which has colour blind, desaturation, and gamma simulation options making it particularly helpful for ensuring website compliance with WCAG standards.
4- Color Leap
Let's travel through time and see how colours have changed throughout history. This site has a bunch of different colour palette generators inspired by different eras and decades. It’s one of a kind and very fun to use!
You simply scroll through the timeline and pick an era that interests you. Then, it shows you a photo from that time period and gives you a bunch of colour combinations and palettes to choose from. You can even click on the colours to copy the hex code or like the palette.
If you’re into finding unique colour combos, Color Leap is definitely worth checking out!
5- Color Name Finder
https://colors.artyclick.com/color-name-finder/
So, this website isn’t exactly a colour palette or combination tool, but it can still be super helpful!
Let’s say you need to name the specific colours you used in your project. Simply paste the HEX code into this website and it’ll suggest the best name match and some similar options for you to choose from.
6- Color Lisa
Have you ever wondered what colours would be included in Frida Kahlo’s, Renoir’s, and Monet's? Well.. you can stop wondering
Color Lisa offers an interesting take on a collection of colour palettes inspired by the works of the world’s greatest artists.
By selecting an artist’s name, users can access a palette of colours associated with that particular artist, along with corresponding hex colour codes that can be easily copied and pasted into HTML or graphics editing software.
7- Designspiration
https://www.designspiration.com/
This versatile website is a wildcard that offers a variety of colour exploration options.
Users can begin their journey by selecting up to five colours on the colour wheel to view real product imagery featuring those colours. Alternatively, they can choose a single colour and receive a selection of stunning colour combinations to complement it. Additionally, users can browse inspirational topics and images and select any of them to generate a unique colour palette.
With its lack of strict rules, this website provides an excellent opportunity to immerse oneself in the world of colour and lose track of time.
8- Adobe Color
https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel
Out of this list, this tool is the most rounded up one.
If you’re an Adobe user, this platform helps you save their colour themes to your Creative Cloud Libraries and use them in Adobe’s desktop and mobile apps. Some of my favourite features of Color include:
- Exploring themes from the Adobe Color community, Adobe Stock images, and Behance projects.
- Browsing trend galleries curated by Adobe Stock and the Behance community.
- Creating colour themes with rules based on a color theory using Color Harmony Mode.
- Utilising Adobe Sensei AI technology to find the perfect colour combinations for projects.
- Contrast checker (AA and AAA) and Blind Safe mode
And it’s a wrap!
Remember to bookmark those links. I hope you find them as useful as I do.
