how to find really unique color
combinations for web design
The Tools:
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CANVA COLOR PALETTE GENERATOR-
This Free Tool lets you upload any image, then it extracts the 4 primary colors from it and provides you their codes. When I find a picture that has the feel I'm going for, I'll upload it here, and sometimes just the right Picture forms the basis of the colors I end up Using. -
MY COLOR SPACE -
This Online Tool, which is also free by the way, lets you input colors, then it expands from there providing you more color scheme options and within those options, more colors
Why I use a 9 Color Palette
In Web Design a color palette refers to the combination of colors you choose for your site’s design. You’ll stick to using these colors throughout your whole site, and most likely in all of your Promotional Materials. Color palettes are used to make sure your website colors coordinate and stay consistent, which builds trust and gives your site a more professional feel.
To make things easier for myself and allow for sophisticated designs, I like to have 9 colors pre-established when I’m building a website. I don’t even have to decide what they will be, I can simply have colors 1-9, then rather than setting text or buttons to be a specific color, I set them to be one of those 9 colors (whatever they end up being). This gives me a unique ability to change the look of my site instantly and flip through color palettes and watch everything on the site change color to find the best option to suit what the look should be.
The way that I use these 9 colors is as follows:
I have 2 accent colors, the brighter accent, and the other accent. I use accent colors for things that I want to draw attention to, like buttons and links. These will be the 2 brightest colors in your color palette in nearly all cases. The only common exception I can think of would be monochromatic websites, where it’s just whites, blacks, and greys, no color at all.
So, what do we do with the remaining 7 colors? Then basically we can either have four different options for background color, to differentiate between sections. Or 4 different options for text color, to give some visual hierarchy to the worded content. Those 4 colors can also be used for things like the border color around images or sections, or shapes such as dividing lines or icon color.
The Kadence Theme has a 9 Color Palette Tool Built-in, and their own reasoning for why they like it, which also rings true to me, you can read that here.