5 of the Best Color Palette Generator Tools

What is a color palette?

A color palette is a combination or set of colors you use to define your brand and begin creating a user experience. Brands use it to showcase their individual personalities and ultimately attract customers. A color palette consists of multiple colors that work together to create a visual experience for your customers. Most individuals are familiar with the color wheel, which can help you find the right colors to form your brand identity.

Designers use color palettes to design websites and marketing materials that help maintain brand consistency across mediums and make interacting with your brand enjoyable for customers. There are many different types of color palettes to consider when designing your brand. The different types of palettes include:

• Monochromatic palettes use different shades of just 1 color.
• Analogous palettes use 3 colors located together on the color wheel.
• Complementary colors are located at opposite ends of the color wheel and produce the most contrast.
• Split-complementary colors use more than 1 set of colors across from each other on the color wheel.
• Triadic colors are 3 separate colors at different ends of the color wheel.
• Tetradic palettes are similar to triadic colors, but they use 4 colors on the color wheel at an equal distance apart.

Because these colors will appear everywhere in connection to your brand, including on business cards, websites, landing pages, and print marketing materials, you must identify the colors that will resonate most with your audience.

Why does color matter for businesses?

Colors are what customers see when they look at your brand, so they’re one of the first impressions any new customers will have of your business. While colors may not seem like an important aspect of branding, they can influence your customer’s behavior and the success of your business. Here are a few reasons why color is important for branding businesses:

Influences decision-making and perception

Colors matter for branding because they can affect how customers perceive your business. Believe it or not, color can have a major influence on purchasing decisions. Your brand’s palette is responsible for conveying a message, and different colors have different meanings. When designing your brand, consider color psychology and how colors impact behaviors (including buying behaviors).

Of course, different colors mean different things, so you might need to brush up on your color theory before branding your business. For example, you may notice many websites use different shades of blue. Blue is perceived as a color that represents dependability and trustworthiness. Examples of blue being used for brand identity include Facebook and Paypal.

Improves accessibility

Website and digital accessibility refers to making your online marketing tools accessible to everyone, including those with certain disabilities. One way colors can help make your website more accessible is through contrast.

By using bright colors on top or dark background colors or vice versa, you can improve the way someone views your website. Additionally, you can choose colors based on color blindness. For example, the most common form of color blindness is red-green color blindness. By avoiding those colors in your branding, you can improve accessibility in email marketing, on your website, and on other marketing materials.

Did you know? Facebook’s brand colors aren’t blue because blue is a color that people perceive with trustworthiness; they’re blue because Mark Zuckerberg is colorblind, and blue is the color he sees the best. Take a note from Facebook when considering your branding colors to ensure everyone has the ability to see and understand your visual messaging.

Enhances brand consistency

Brand consistency is a way to help your potential customers more easily recognize your business based on consistent messaging and imagery. If you use different colors and designs throughout your marketing materials, customers won’t be able to associate you with one single message, which can make remembering your brand difficult.

When customers see your advertisement online and click through to your website, they expect to see the same messaging and colors to show them they’re in the right place. Additionally, your blog should match the rest of your website, so read up on blog design tips to ensure you’re using best practices.

5 color palette generators

Now that you understand the importance of colors in business, you must find the right colors to convey your brand’s unique messaging and personality. A color palette generator, also known as a color combo generator, can help you find the best colors, shades, and tones for your brand based on the color wheel.

If you don’t have an eye for design, color palette generators can help you find colors that match and look great together to ensure your brand consistently delivers a good experience whenever customers or potential customers interact with it. Here are a few of the best color palette generators you can start using today.

Adobe Color

If you’re familiar with the Adobe Suite of design products, you may feel right at home using Adobe Color, a color schemes generator that allows you to easily select the right colors and color combinations for your brand, no matter what type of color palette you want to use.

Adobe Color can help you find the right color for your brand by uploading images to generate your color palette. Therefore, if you find an image you like or are already using imaging in your marketing strategy, you can find the right colors to match your existing marketing collateral. Adobe Color is free to use for anyone, so you don’t need an account to get started.

ColorSpace

ColorSpace is another popular color combo generator that’s free to try right now. With ColorSpace, you can begin finding the best color palette for your brand by using color codes or the color gradient feature. This tool is best used if you have a specific color in mind and are looking for other colors that will match it. However, you can also experiment and try to find a color palette based on colors you’re already using in association with your brand.

Khroma

Khroma is a great tool for designers of all levels. Khroma uses machine learning to help you find and generate unique color palettes based on your brand. This tool requires slightly more work than the others listed above because it takes you through a process of choosing a set of 50 colors before you can see your palette. Then, through machine learning, Khroma uses the colors you’ve selected to find a color palette based on your unique preferences and delivers combinations based on those choices.

Canva

Canva is a tool designed to help anyone with any background design marketing materials for their business. With the Canva color palette generator, you can upload images, and Canva will select a palette based on the colors of those images. You can also create a custom color palette or explore pre-made color combinations.

When creating your own custom color palette, Canva will show you the color wheel and ask you to choose a color, and a type of color combination, then display the 2 colors below. Canva is one of the easiest color scheme generators to use, but it’s more limited than the other robust tools.

Color Hunt

Color Hunt is another free and easy-to-use tool that has a collection of pre-designed color palettes for brand use. Once you search for a color palette by selecting a color or collection, you can begin browsing through thousands of automatically generated color schemes created by other designers.

Use colors to set your brand identity

Color matters when it comes to building your brand identity. When paired with the perfect words, color can enhance all aspects of your marketing efforts by boosting brand awareness, improving the customer experience, and evoking emotions in your customers that make them want to take action. When identifying the right colors for your brand, consider what messages you’re trying to convey and which colors can support your branding efforts.