I have to admit that I'm a lot better at admiring a nice set of colors to serve as a “palette” for a web page than I am at picking the colors from scratch. I also find it hard to be imaginatative in picking nice looking complementary colors, given a “main” color.

It had been some time since I google for “color schemes” or “web colors”, but this time when I tried a search on “web page effective color schemes combinations”, I came across this marvelous website:  EasyRGB.com/ Although I was wanting to experiment with color schemes for a website I'm helping my church set up, when I found this site I immediatly wished I had known about it last winter when we were getting ready to re-paint our house. What a gem -- here's a way to have the consultation of a color consultant . For free

One really neat feature was their “Search a Tint”. This tool will let you pick any of about 20 different paint companys color palettes, then type in a color name. You don't need to know any of their fancy names -- just try the basic color you're interested in. For example, I picked Sherwin Williams, then typed in Green, and here's what came back:

 

1

 

1172 PEACEFUL GREEN
218  222  207  #DADECF

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

2

 

1174 GETAWAY GREEN
118  127  105  #767F69

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

3

 

1179 SEAFOAM GREEN
216  221  208  #D8DDD0

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

4

 

1182 MALACHITE GREEN
76  89  73  #4C5949

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

5

 

1194 MYSTERY GREEN
151  160  149  #97A095

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

6

 

1196 ESTABLISHED GREEN
68  84  74  #44544A

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

7

 

1203 EDWARDIAN GREEN
51  73  71  #334947

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

8

 

1406 SAVANNA GREEN
134  115  71  #867347

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

9

 

1407 LEA GREEN
210  202  162  #D2CAA2

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

10

 

1420 LODEN GREEN
104  100  70  #686446

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

11

 

1421 PRIMITIVE GREEN
202  206  161  #CACEA1

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

12

 

1432 GREEN TWILL
174  189  142  #AEBD8E

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

13

 

1438 GREENISH
222  230  209  #DEE6D1

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

14

 

1439 MOOR GREEN
166  189  144  #A6BD90

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

15

 

1442 GREENROOM
191  214  187  #BFD6BB

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

16

 

1688 SPRITE GREEN
238  238  180  #EEEEB4

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

17

 

1689 BABYLON GREEN
239  238  196  #EFEEC4

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

18

 

1692 AVANT GARDE GREEN
221  226  91  #DDE25B

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

19

 

1693 FESTIVE GREEN
213  217  42  #D5D92A

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

20

 

1696 MINUET GREEN
233  238  195  #E9EEC3

MatchCalculatorHarmonies

 

Now if you want to find complementary colors, just click the “harmonies” link, and you'll see a full range of harmonizing colors.

But it gets better!!!  This was apparently the initial site to do something like this, but now there are some specialized engines for generating palettes of colors. Check out these:
Color Mix rematch ,
Traumwind 6-Colormatch
ColorMatch 10k - I like this one because it lets you save up to 4 palettes for quick comparison.

Sponsor