A list of 7 resources for generating color palettes. Useful for all forms of design and creativity.
Intro
As a person who has an enormous collection of unfinished designs, drafts and ideas, I often reuse color palettes that I've made in the past. A long time ago I came across a little book in the bookstore called "Dictionary of Color Combinations" written by Haishoku Soukan, based on the works of Sanzo Wada. Wada was a Japanese painter and printmaker born in 1883. To this day his color theories are still used at the Japan Color Research Institute. The book mainly consists of pages with a myriad of 2-, 3- and 4-color combinations. The book doesn't do much else, other than be aesthetically pleasing, but it intrigued me enough to buy it. From then on, I've been looking around for color palettes and found some useful resources that designers and other creatives can use for their works. So without further ado, here are 7 colorful resources.
7 resources
Dictionary of Color Combinations Vol 1
First up is volume 1 of the Dictionary of Color Combination, as mentioned in the intro. This book is what sparked my journey into finding the perfect color combinations and palettes for my designs. I also use this book for when I want to mix different colors in an outfit. It's versatile, has loads of combinations, feels nostalgic and looks good on your coffee table, and that for less than 20$.
Dictionary of Color Combinations Vol 2
Volume 2 of the book has more additional color combinations, but also features patterns. Most of these patterns were used back in the days for the design of kimono's, but you might find a different way to apply these. Much like in fashion, some patterns will make a comeback. If you want only one of these books, I still recommend volume 1.
Sanzo Wada Color Combinations Index
This website is an index of all the color combinations that were made by Sanzo Wada. It's a fun website to browse through, keeping in mind that most of these color combinations were made in the early 1900s. The website is developed by Dain Blodorn Kim and can be used just like the books, but now digital.
Randoma11y
Randoma11y is a website that generates 2-color combinations that shows you the accessibility rating of all the combo's. I personally like this for things like color-blocking, but also for designing accessible and funky websites or apps. Accessibility doesn't have to be boring, so whenever I want to spice up a design with some popping colors, I venture to Randoma11y and pick out the most funky combo.
Huemint
Huemint is a color combination generator that instantly shows you real-world examples of the colors. I really like the mockups they use to instantly give you a better feel of how the colors match in different scenario's. I usually gravitate more towards this generator when I want to do more product design.
Colormind
Colormind is a website full of entire color palettes, based on movies, illustrations and art. Its useful for cohesive, aesthetically pleasing palettes. Colormind also has the option to see the palettes used in a website mockup to give a more complete look into the colors and their combinations.
AI Colors
AI is everywhere, so obviously I had to include at least one resource that makes use of AI. As far as it goes, it's more of a prompt-esque generator that uses your input to create a cohesive palette and shows the results in a mockup. Exporting gives you the palette in CSS format to quickly insert it into your websites. I like the way it uses your prompts to come up with a color palette and it seems to listen pretty good so far. Below is the result of the prompt "Shawty fire burning on the dancefloor", a famous quote by the legend Sean Kingston.
