top five online color palette generators
A guide for colorists looking for color palette inspiration for their next creative project.
WHAT IS AN ONLINE COLOR PALETTE GENERATOR?
A color palette generator is a tool that helps you discover and create harmonious color combinations. Although it’s usually meant for digital designers, colorists (both digital and traditional) can take advantage of this when planning a color scheme for a new coloring page.
It’s great for discovering which colors work well together – but it can also help you explore unconventional color combinations you haven’t thought of.
HOW TO USE IT FOR COLORING PAGES?
For digital colorists, you get the exact hex code of the colors, and often also the option to download and import the color palette directly to your coloring software.
If you like to color traditionally, you might not have an exact match amongst your pencils or markers to the suggested colors, but that doesn’t matter – the point is to get inspired!
Some of the color palette generators create examples with only four colors – if you need more for your coloring page, feel free to experiment! Combine different palettes!
In some of the below examples you can save your favorite palettes – even if you don’t have a user profile and aren’t logged in anywhere, which makes it a little unclear how long the save will last. In those cases, I recommend taking screenshots of the palettes you like.
Remember: This is meant as inspiration – it’s supposed to be a fun way to get new ideas.
The palettes are pre-made, but there are loads to choose from, and you can make adjustments.
If you click the palette icon you can choose more precisely which hue you want to focus on for the color palette.
When you’re on the front page and hover over a color combination, you’ll see a small heart in the top left corner. If you click it, it’ll save the color palette – but it’s a little unclear how long the save lasts since there’s no login. You can take screenshots just in case.
You can also see that you’ve actually got a palette with four versions of both colors and you can see the hex-code for the two main colors (in this example, #6F60CA and #37D5A5). This is relevant if you color digitally and want an exact match.
Where it says Pigment you can adjust the saturation of the colors. Where it says Lighting you can adjust the brightness.
By clicking on a color combination you’ll get to see more information about all the different color variants in the palette.
If you click on More Actions you can download the color palette so you can import it into a digital coloring software. If you color traditionally, you can save the color combos by just taking a screenshot.
Choose the starting color to make it generate color palettes for you.
Click the circle in the top left to open the color picker.
On the color bar to the right you can choose the hue.
Select the exact color you want inside the square.
Then click the magnifying glass and watch the color palettes generate.
You can click on any of the new colors in the palette and get a whole new set of palettes generated based on that color. The possibilities are endless!
Screenshots are your best option to quickly save the color palettes.
Coolors have a pretty nice tutorial explaining the basics if you click Start the generator and then click the three dots on the following page. In short, you can choose which color to start with, or just look at pre-made color palettes.
You can create a free user account where you can save up to ten color palettes.
When looking at color palettes in the trending section, you can click the three dots and then open the palette in the generator to make adjustments.
You have to pay for the pro user account, but you also get a lot more options and features with it. If you’re primarily a colorist, I think you’ll get very far with the free version.
The pro user account is great if you like to create and save lots of color palettes (and even fonts and gradients), and want the option of organizing them in projects and collections. I know this is particularly convenient when working with graphic design and branding.
If you’re interested in a pro account, I would be very grateful if you’d click the affiliate link below when you sign up – that way I get a small commission from the sale (with no extra cost to you):
https://coolors.co/?ref=6179bdf159c307000a9eb886
Lots of pre-made palettes available – and the option to contribute with your own!
The menu to the left is an easy way to navigate based on different themes.
You can save your favorite palettes, but this site doesn’t have a login, so I’m not sure how long you can expect the save to last.
If you click on a specific palette you can download it as an image. Otherwise, taking screenshots is always an option.
Create your own color palette!
Click the three dots in the upper right corner of the page.
Click the rectangles with the default gray to open the color picker.
Use the color bar at the bottom to choose the hue.
Select the exact color you want inside the square.
You start out by picking the color you want to generate color palettes from.
Click on the default hex code to open the color picker.
Choose the hue on the color bar to the left.
Select the exact color you want inside the square.
Click GENERATE.
You get lots of combinations from this, and I’m only highlighting a few below.
There are more online color generators out there, but these are my top five favorites. What they all have in common is that they’re easy to use and can provide you with practically endless inspiration for color combinations.
