It's best to work out at the start two or three colours you will use as the basis for your pages. Think of one as a main colour and the others as trim. This is what designers would call the Palette. This also works if your site is going to be predominantly white. Here's an example of what we mean:
The numbers you see under the colours are the six digit reference numbers that websites use to define them.
We've found a great tool for finding complimentary colours and that's Toucan from Aviary. It lets you find different ways of choosing main and trim colours that really work together, and is a very powerful free tool (opens in a new window).
They have a video on how to use the product, but if you want a quick start with some basics, follow the 5 easy steps below.
Step 1 - once you have Toucan open you should be able to see it looking like this:
The first thing to do is adjust the brightness of the colour wheel using the slider underneath it.
Step 2 - in the drop down menu called 'Type' you can choose different ways of finding complimentary colours. We quite like 'Equidistant' which should be the default choice.
Step 3 - click somewhere in the colour wheel close to your predominant colour. It will show as the top colour in the vertical bar next to the wheel, and there should be two complimentary colours underneath it.
Step 4 - after finding the colours you like, drag each one into the palette along the top.
Step 5 - write down the 6 digit colour reference numbers, as the quickest and most accurate way to add colours to a web page is typing that number into the appropriate boxes.
