Top 5 Color Scheme Tools
When it comes to making an app, some of the biggest struggles developers face is outside of the code itself. What should I name the app? Who is my target audience? Or the one I struggle with the most: what colors should I use in my Android application?
This last question does not have one right or wrong answer. For that reason, it is one of the hardest questions to answer. Thankfully, there are many tools out there to help you determine your applications color scheme, and these are my five favorites.
Material Design Specs
If you’re trying to use Material Design in your Android applications, there’s no better place to go for advice than the Material Design specs. Google has several different color palettes for all of the colors that you may want to use in your app. When using this tool to determine your colors, keep in mind these three things:
- Use the 500 level color as your Toolbar background.
- Use the 700 level color for your StatusBar.
- Use one of the A level colors as your accent color. This is typically different from your primary color.
If you want to overview these palettes quickly, MaterialUI.co displays them side by side.
MaterialPalette
MaterialPalette.com uses the same colors as you’ll find in the Google design specs. One benefit of this website, though, is that you get to pick a primary color and an accent color and see a quick sample of how they look side by side. As if that wasn’t enough, once you’ve found the scheme you like you can see all of the necessary hex codes to use in your application. This is my favorite tool on the list.
Paletton
If you’re not interested in the MaterialDesign colors, or you are trying to build a color scheme based around an existing primary color such as the branding for your company, Palleton.com is a very helpful tool. Paletton allows you to work with the entire color spectrum, choose how many colors you want to view, and whether or not to add a complimentary color. Click around the color wheel and see what you get, or type in the hex code you want and find colors that work with it!
Coolors
Another great tool that goes beyond the scope of Material Design colors is Coolors.co. This website is arguably the most flexible tool on the list, as it allows you to not only enter existing colors you want to use, but you can lock in any of the five colors you like and continue to randomize around them until you get the ones you want. I like to think of this as color palette Yahtzee.
Color Blender
This tool is similar to the last two in the sense that you can give it a base color you want to use, and it will automatically generate five other colors to use in your palette. If you don’t have a base color, you can use the RGB sliders on Color Blender to get your base color, and watch it pick the other five colors for you. When you’re done, you can copy all the necessary hex codes, or get a link straight back to your blend.
Was your favorite tool not on this list? Let us know in the comments!
