Tips and Tools of Colour Schemes Usage For Web Developers

All designers must remember is that a great web design is a perfect combination of typography, layout and, of course, colour schemes. As a designer, if you are capable to make these aspects work and complement each other, you will give birth to an interactive website that can also serve as a means of communication. We all know that whenever a visitor visits any website, colour schemes are one of the first things he notices.

There are multiple reasons to why colour schemes are super important and take a big role in any design process. One of the reasons is that colours can deliver your message across. Not only this, your colour scheme will also affect the mood of your visitors. Effective and good colour schemes will influence your visitors in many ways. You can imagine the importance of colour schemes with the fact that multi-national corporations are investing millions of dollars these days to decide a perfect colour scheme for their brand, packaging and of course websites.

The web is undoubtedly chock-full of so many colour scheme tools that will help you in making the perfect colour scheme. Obviously, not all tools will bring the same mesmerizing effect but yes, these tools can help a lot. In order to make things convenient for you, we have compiled a list of some of the great tools for selecting colour schemes for your website.

We’ll get to the tools later in the article; let us take a look at some of the latest trends in colour schemes.

Trendy colour schemes for mobile designing: Earlier, people have been playing safe with colour schemes when it came to mobile designing. However, now, people are open to experiments and are using some interesting and cool colour schemes. Since mobile screens offer limited space, you need to be very careful with what you display. A mobile user is way too distracted and your app will only get attention if your colour scheme is attractive. If you want your colour scheme to work, make sure it is well executed.

- Colours as accent: Accent colours are very popular and are being used everywhere. They are mostly used to guide users. If you are doing this in mobile, better go with big, bold and beautiful colours because they catch attention easily. Following examples will help you understand the above statements in a better way.

http://dribbble.com/shots/932927-Listing-Detail

- Colours as a statement: Making a statement is not at all difficult. All you need to do is be heard and do something wild. Why? It grabs attention, simple as that. Your colour scheme should be attractive along with bold typography.

http://dribbble.com/shots/932322-Portfolio-restyling

http://dribbble.com/shots/947816-Data-tracker

- Colours and emotions: As mentioned earlier, colours play an important role in emotions. Every colour defines something and they can be very powerful. Use colours relevant to your product.

http://dribbble.com/shots/941102-Foolious-Main-Site

Trendy 'Retro' colour schemes: Old is gold, and what was once old can be new again. Retro colour palettes are trending and the comeback mostly contains all retro colours i.e., from yellow to browns to blues. Retro colours are not that saturated and have a little bit of flat look.

http://iamprojectgift.com/

http://theorydesign.ca/

- Characteristics of Retro schemes: The retro colour scheme can be judged by the fact that there won’t be any bright colours. You will have to purposely manipulate colours in order to come up with a retro colour palette.

http://golivebutton.com/

- Retro fonts and textures: Like I said earlier, typography plays a very important role in highlighting colour schemes. I would suggest you to go with period lettering as they will also give a retro look.

http://peternappi.com/

Flat design colour trends: Flat design has been the talk of the town recently. When it comes to flat designing, you can go with variety of colours. However, as the trend suggests, you should go with bright colours. The best thing about flat designing is that designers are experimenting and expanding colour palettes. Designers are using even four or more colours. Flat design can have following colour palettes:

- Bright colours

http://flatuicolours.com/

- Retro colours

http://invoisse.com/

- Monotone colours

http://dribbble.com/shots/912418-Flat-List

So in short, flat design is a perfect mixture of all trends.

Popular New Trends in Colour Schemes For Website Templates (Taken from IM creator – HTML5 website builder): http://app.imcreator.com/preview?vbid=731B225BBCBA447898A67C95949974BB

This template is a great example of latest trends in colour schemes. As per the latest flat design trends, they’ve kept the background white and spacious. Also, you can clearly see the typography and use of pastel colour to highlight the tabs. Looks perfect for any new, trendy website.

http://app.imcreator.com/preview?vbid=CF774CCC7FCD47D79298F5D7CDE74725

With this template as you can see the border of the website with a combination of two pastel colours. The background of the website is again plain white with text in the same colours as used in the border to create a harmony. The area that needs to be highlighted has been differentiated with the typical and perfect black and white combination.

http://app.imcreator.com/preview?vbid=246178C89E514CDFB474685213D40A16

White and red combination. It not only looks good but if you plan to play it safe, this is perfect for you. Plain white background, red text to highlight important content and rest of the content in a perfect white, grey and black colour looks amazing. Also, the products are properly highlighted with almost no distractions.

http://app.imcreator.com/preview?vbid=5DCEC7F9A03344B3AA296A954F4DF44D

A creative layout where the background is black but images are used as well. Plain white and bold text is used on the black background. Looks subtle, neat, crisp and attractive.

Now let us take a look at the tools to tweak the colour trends:

http://flatuicolours.com/

With this small web app, you can copy the colours from flat UI. Responsive so it can be used with a small browser having a widget.

https://kuler.adobe.com/

Again a great tool, in fact a colour wheel in order to help you with creating colour schemes. You can not only create a scheme, but also select from the tool’s themes.

http://www.colourlovers.com/copaso/ColourPaletteSoftware

COPASP is a colour palette software and will help you in creating a colour perfect colour palette. You have two options to select from - basic and advanced and if advanced comes across too rich for your taste, you can always go back to the basic colour palette tool.

http://web.colourotate.org/

This tool will bring your colours to life in 3D. Here you can either browse colour palettes or even create one yourself. You have all the freedom to adjust colour schemes, blend them until your heart’s content.

http://colourschemedesigner.com/

This is a colour scheme designer which offers unlimited options. You can undo, redo, select from random colour schemes and adjust them as well. It offers a wide range of colour list and while selecting, you have the option to preview the colour scheme as well.

http://www.pictaculous.com/

A colour palette generator so it reduces your work. It also works with your phone. All you need to do is upload an image and get a colour palette for it. It is actually as simple as that.

http://www.colourblender.com/

Select a colour of your choice, and a 6-colour matching palette will be automatically calculated. You have an ability to edit the palette. Read the FAQs in order to understand the usage in a better way.

http://colourexplorer.com/

This is an online toolbox for working with your colour palettes. You can easily and quickly create colour palettes with this free software.

Conclusion: The above tools can help you with developing colour schemes for your website. Make sure to keep in mind your brand’s concept and latest trends while creating a colour scheme. Creating a colour scheme that is perfect for your site and brand could be a difficult task with many factors to consider, however following trends and of course, using your aesthetic sense can surely help you develop the colour scheme that is right for you.