Find The Right Color Schemes With Colors On The Web

Color is a beautiful thing! However, sometimes it can be difficult just figuring out the right one to choose. Thousands of people spend countless hours agonizing over what to wear, what to paint the walls, or what type of icing to put on the cake. The Color Plague is terrible, and it seems as though no one has come up with an efficient way to fix it… or have they?

Below, you’ll find a fantastic website called Color On The Web (COTW), a place that is full of all kinds of little-known color knowledge and excellent assistance. What’s great about this site is that it is full of easy-to-read tips that are efficient and, most of all, doable. So do me a favor and pull up Microsoft Paint (kidding). We’re going to learn all there is to know about Colors On The Web.

Lessons On Color Theory

COTW keys in on the importance of color theory and yes… the color wheel. For those of you going into anything with any element of design, these are two very important items that you should learn about.  Fortunately, the website has a variety of lessons and tips that will aid you on everything that there is to learn about them.

Topics include: Color Physics, The Color Wheel, Color Terms, Combining Colors, and Color Contrast. Overall, you can tell that with these five topics alone, there is a lot of material to cover.

Furthermore, COTW offers education on the basics of color schemes. In fact, the site is set to provide information on good color schemes! Granted, at the time of this article, this portion of the site is down. However, it is assumed that it will eventually be back up and running. However, as silly as it seems, the site also offers information on… well… color names. My friends, I had the 64 crayon box of Crayola with the sharpener. I think I’m good.

As a note, there is a “Color Blog” on the site. However, it hasn’t been updated in a gazillion years. In fact, it hasn’t even been updated since the first post. Nevertheless, the site still has some great content.

Color Tips For The Web

As you may know, hex code for colors on the web is a whole other waterpark. The site offers quick tips and solutions for CSS and HTML sites utilizing such codes, and furthermore, it offers an in-depth explanation as to how these codes work. I’ll be honest – it was just a little over my head.

Additionally, there is a decently-sized set of “websafe colors” that – as expected – are perfect for website usage. This certainly does not mean that these are the only colors you should use. However, it’s a good idea to consult this page just in case.

Color Tools

We’ve gotten to my favorite part about this site: the color tools. COTW offers a few tools to help you pick just the right complements and schemes for whatever you are working on. This is really what makes the site shine, to be honest. You’ll find them below.

Color Wizard: This tool allows you to submit one color that you absolutely want to use (the base color), and then it finds other hues that will match the base perfectly. Very useful, and I’ve actually implemented it on one of my more recent projects.

Color Wheel: Are you not sure what kind of color you want? “Spin” the Color Wheel, and you’ll get three colors that complement each other well. It’s quite simple to use, and COTW actually offers an example to show what the colors would look like together on a website. Also, you could take one color from the Color Wheel you like and use it with the Color Wizard, if you want.

Color Contrast Analyzer: Admittedly, I do not fully understand this tool. I understand what it does! However, I’m just not sure how it works just yet. Basically, the tool analyzes your color schemes, and it determines as to whether or not what is on screen is visible for reading. This is a great tool when creating anything that involves displaying text.

Conclusion

That’s all the color we have for you today, folks. However, I hope that this site will help you out with whatever you have coming up. Just make sure to visit Colors On The Web and check things out for yourself!

(As a note, there are some portions of the site that seem slightly abandoned. However, this does not take away from the functionality of what I have shown here.)

Did this site help you at all? Have you learned anything from this site? What other sites help you with color schemes?

Originally published on MakeUseOf.com. Great site, check it out.