Color picker

Colors and shades play an important role in the design of interiors, furniture, clothes, cars, electronic devices, accessories. An incorrectly chosen color can spoil the appearance of an object and make it incompatible with surrounding objects. For example, a classic black smartphone will always be in the highest demand (at the moment it is chosen by about 40% of buyers), and only 3-4% choose a red design, although the functionality of both devices is absolutely identical.

The same applies to other areas: the automotive industry, the textile industry, the production of finishing building materials. Everywhere you need to specify and combine colors, and most importantly - to know their clear names and serial numbers (or codes). Today, this is easier than ever before. It is enough to use special applications that identify all existing shades online and instantly give out their characteristics.

Why define colors

For example, you are an interior designer, and the client insists on decorating the room in ultramarine blue tones. Using the basic RAL table, you can quickly determine that the shade you are looking for is RAL5001, and the closest to it are RAL5001, RAL5005, RAL5011. Knowing the color codes, you can quickly find and buy suitable finishing materials and translate them into ready-made interior solutions. Why else would you need an accurate color definition?

Distinguish colors

According to statistics, every tenth man incorrectly identifies individual colors. Most often, problems arise with green and red tones, less often with blue and yellow. Color blindness can be a real problem in life (one of the most common is running a red light), and an online color-detection app can be a real help in everyday life. Moreover, it is undemanding to smartphone performance and runs even on older models.

Interior design

When decorating the interior, it is better to operate not with the lengthy names of shades (bluish-blue or pinkish-orange), but with their specific technical names. This will eliminate the risk of errors when purchasing materials, especially if you order them with delivery (without a personal presence in the store). So, the wish “I want to decorate the bathroom in a very light greenish blue color” will look like “I need the shade HEX #a3c6c0”. Mistakes and misunderstandings in the second case are reduced to zero, since you clearly voice the desired shade.

Selection of clothes and accessories

All elements of the wardrobe should be in harmony with each other, which is quite difficult to achieve when buying clothes, shoes and wearable accessories on the Internet. How to determine without trying on whether two things are compatible with each other or not? To do this, just open the identifier application, upload a screenshot of the item you like into it and determine its color scheme. By identifying the colors, it is much easier to find suitable combinations for any item of clothing, including those already purchased.

Website design

For each selling site, color design is a priority, and instead of the usual names of shades ("dark chocolate", "ultramarine", "moss green"), fractional numbers, values in degrees and percentages are used here. For example, HEX (#1f4037), RGB (244, 93, 56) or HSL/HSV (145°, 32%, 27%).

HTML documents also use additional CSS/CSS3 encoding to add the currentColor keywords to the code.

It is not necessary to thoroughly understand all these nuances today, the desired colors are determined / identified automatically - through web applications. It is enough to move the mouse cursor over a pixel of the image, and its hue will be determined in RGB/RGBA, HEX, HSL (grayscale), CSS/CSS3 and other systems. After copying this data, you can immediately use it for further work.

Production of printing products

Leaflets, business cards, brochures, flyers - all these and many other printed products are rarely produced in black and white. For their design, basic and advanced palettes are used, in which each shade is represented as a number or code. Most often in the printing industry, the CMYK system is used - a color model that imitates the mixing of colors on paper. The first 3 letters in the abbreviation mean Cyan, Magenta and Yellow - respectively: cyan, magenta and yellow; plus the word Key (or Black - black).

Summing up, it is worth noting that only narrow specialists remember by heart the names of all (or at least most) color shades according to existing tables. This information is difficult to remember and is practically not used in everyday life. It is much easier to open the application, identify the color from the picture and only then use the received codes or names for further work. Today it can be done in a couple of clicks and completely free!

The issue of selecting and combining different colors or shades is especially relevant for designers and marketers. It has long been known that each color has its own emotional content and evokes unique sets of associations for observers.

So, red is subconsciously associated with aggression, orange - with warmth and comfort, yellow - with positive and youthfulness...

How to combine colors correctly

It would seem that it could be easier? Just "pull" two or three shades from the palette and combine them to get a unique combination. Unfortunately, arbitrary combinations in the overwhelming majority of cases are unsuccessful and come into sharp contrast / disharmony both with each other and with the surrounding interior or exterior. The work of designers is based on this - the search for truly successful shades and their combinations that can create the right mood.

For those who are just starting to learn the basics of color, simple but very important tips will come in handy:

Limit the number of colors. The more of them in the composition, the worse it looks. Even 4-5 combined shades can cause chaos and imbalance, so combinations of 2-3 colors have always been and remain win-win options. Moreover, in the case of three, only one of them can be contrasting. Examples of good combinations are: “light yellow + dark yellow + blue” or “light orange + dark orange + burgundy” - that is, when 2 colors are close in spectrum, and the third one stands out against their background.
Adhere to the proportion 6/3/1. The main color in the composition should be 60%, additional - 30% and contrasting - 10%. At the same time, the additional one should “support” the main one, favorably highlighting it against its background. It is quite enough to allocate 10% to contrasting (accentuating) details, from this they will only look more expressive. And when you try to mix colors in equal proportions, you will inevitably get a “vinaigrette” - tasteless and forgettable.
Start with black and white. In the case of complex, multi-component compositions, it is better to start not with “coloring”, but with the correct arrangement of dark and light elements. The HSL system will help you with this, the name of which consists of the capital letters of the words Hue (hue), Saturate (saturation) and Lightness (brightness). It is enough to upload the image to the online service, move the Saturate slider to zero, and the picture will turn black and white: with 256 shades of gray. And after the arrangement of the elements, they can be purposefully “colored” - adhering to the proportion 6/3/1.
Use the psychology of color. Most people associate orange with warmth and comfort, green with nature and vitality, blue with lightness, blue with peace, purple with creativity and fantasy , white - with freshness and purity, and black - with strength and elegance. Each shade has emotional fullness, and it is important to be able to find it and use it correctly. Moreover, there are noticeable differences not only in different colors, but also in the smallest shades. So, hot pink evokes associations with sensuality, excitement, youth and excitement, and pastel pink - with softness, weakness, tenderness, comfort and fragility.

There are several ways to properly combine colors. One of the simplest and most effective is the Itten color wheel. It is divided into 12 parts, each of which contains gradations of the same color or the colors closest in spectrum. In one, from burgundy to pink, in the other, from dark blue to light blue, in the third, from green-yellow to lemon, and so on. Using the Itten circle, you can quickly find successful combinations:

Monochrome. Created from two shades located in the same fraction of a circle. For example, from blue-green and ultramarine.
Complementary. Combine two shades located in a circle opposite each other.
Extremely remote. To create such a combination, you need to take one color from the circle (any) and combine it with the shade that is next to the opposite to it - on the right or left.

Most of the successful color combinations follow Itten's circle matching rules. For example, the red and yellow Shell logo or the purple and orange FedEx emblem. It is difficult to imagine them in black and white, and it is precisely the right shades (in combination with the overall shape and composition) that make them so bright and memorable!

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