Are you in need of inspiration for your next project’s colour palette? Well lucky for you, we’ve compiled a few of the handy sources we use to develop the perfect colour palette. All free and easily accessible, here they are in no particular order:
1. Coolors
Coolors is very cool indeed. A simple yet handy website to help you explore possibilities and experiment with colour combos. All you need to do is smash that space bar repeatedly and it will automatically generate a palette with a set of 5 colours. Coolors also allows you to alter the shade, hue and saturation of either a single colour or the whole set. You can lock and rearrange colours to help you refine in more detail. It even caters for 8 types of colour blindness. You can set the colours to display as monochromatic, as well as generate a palette from an uploaded photo. And last but not least, Coolors lets you save and export your sets with the name and hue value. Top stuff.
2. AWSM Color
AWSM Colour is an instagram page full of beautifully aesthetic chosen colour palettes of four colours each. It’s honestly one of the most useful pages I’ve seen, and super handy for general inspiration. The page tends to post on average every few days, and in each post you can scroll through each colour to see it’s name and HEX, RGB, HSL and CMYK colour values. I definitely recommend jumping onto this page and giving it a follow.
3. AWSM Gradient
A sister page to AWSM Colour, AWSM Gradient provides the same amazing aesthetic but with smooth gradients. Displaying the Hue codes and linear degrees, makes it super easy to replicate in your own designs. The page generates a range of bright contrasting blends to such subtle and gentle gradients. Both AWSM pages were created by @azis.so a multidisciplinary designer based in Bandung.
4. Color Hunt
Colour Hunt is a “free and open platform for colour inspiration with thousands of trendy hand-picked colour palettes”. It’s really useful for when you know the style that you’re looking for. Whether it be complimentary, monochromatic. Bright neons or pastels, Colour Hunt has all sorts. Unfortunately, other than new, trendy and popular, there is no way to filter the types of palettes you’re looking for. However, the website displays many palettes at a time, making it easy to scroll through and find what you need, as well as providing alternatives you may not have considered. Plus, who doesn’t love browsing through colour palettes anyway right?
5. Material Design Palette
For all those UI designers out there, Material Design Palette is a great resource to gather colours chosen to display well on screen. Unlike some other resources we’ve mentioned, this website doesn’t have an extensive choice when it comes to picking actual colours. Instead, you choose two colours from a basic set designed for UI and it displays them on a preview mock up, along with a generated palette built from your two choices. Although it may not have a lot of variety in terms of specific Hues, it is extremely useful for experimenting with primary and accent colours.
6. ColorZilla
ColorZilla is a Google Chome/Firefox extension that allows you to pick colours with your cursor from any website or photo in your browser. It simultaneously copies the Hue value to your clipboard and provides variations for HSL and RGB. You can revisit your colour picking history, generate colours from a standard colour wheel and also has a CSS gradient generator which can come in handy for web developers. All accessible from the top of your browser, making it super efficient. We find the ColorZilla extension to be extremely useful for grabbing colours from designs and photos without having to pull them into photoshop.
7. Colours Cafe
Similar to AWSM Color, Colours Cafe is an instagram page that regularly posts aesthetic colour palettes. It’s a great source of inspiration and idea generation. Each palette includes all the colour values for each colour, including HEX, RGB, HSL, CMYK and Pantone (when applicable). This is incredibly useful. The page also often posts colour palette challenges, and continuously encourages viewers to tag their work when using a pallet from their page. Definitely a great page to follow.
With these resources on your digital toolbelt, you’ll be set for colour inspiration. I don’t think I’ve ever had to look futher than one of these at a time to either find a great colour palette or just inspiration to create my own.
