14 Best Color Tools for Web Designers in 2023

 These tools will help web designers with color selection, one of the most important decisions when creating a website. Each color has a special psychological effect on the one who views it, which is why it is so important not to make a mistake with the choice.

For example, red is usually considered a high-energy color, while blue is calm and peaceful. 

In order to understand how this works in practice, think about what colors you would use on a site for the sale of children's toys, and on the site of a law firm? Most likely, bright, vibrant colors come to mind for the first case and muted blues and grays for the second.

But how do you know how to choose the right shades that combine with each other? Luckily, you don't need to learn all of the color theories to create a working palette. And to help you choose the right colors, we've rounded up 14 of the best tools that will do the job perfectly for free.

1. HueSnap

HueSnap is always ready to help during the rush of inspiration. Whether it's the decor of a hotel room or the light from the lanterns in the park, that gave you inspiration for the perfect color palette for your next site. Just take a photo and use HueSnap to turn it into a palette.

The application is also adapted for mobile use, you can easily save and share your palettes with others. It contains many useful features to help you customize your palette with options such as choosing complementary or complementary colors.

2.   Khroma

Khroma is a very interesting AI tool that will help you easily compare and find original color combinations. You are simply training an AI algorithm that will work like an extension of your brain. Start by choosing 50 colors that you like. 

These colors are used to train a neural network that can recognize hundreds of thousands of similar colors.

Colors offer a wide range of tools to customize the perfect palette. In addition to this, you can easily export your final result in many different formats, making it much easier to use the palette in the future. 

It's not just a tool for creating a color palette, it also allows you to view other users' creations for inspiration. The Explore section features hundreds (if not thousands) of palettes that you can easily view, save, and edit.

Coolors is available on desktop, on iOS, as extensions in Adobe (PhotoShop, Illustrator, InDesign), and even as a Google Chrome extension for even easier access.

4. Adobe Color CC

The free tool Adobe Color CC has been around for a while and is one of the best tools for creating color palettes. 

It allows you not only to create your own palettes but also to see what others have done. You can pick a color from the color wheel (or directly from an image), and apply different rules to easily generate a palette. 

At the same time, the creation process is quite flexible, because each color can be customized to your liking on your own.

The newest feature in Adobe Color CC is a tool that quickly tells you whether your chosen colors will work with color blindness and how effective they are as a background for text.

5. Colordot

Colordot by Hailpixel is a great free color palette tool. You can easily select and save colors with simple mouse movements. 

Move the mouse pointer back and forth to define the hue, up and down to define brightness, roll the mouse wheel to define saturation, and click to save the color to your palette. To see the RGB and HSL values ​​for each color, simply click on the gear icon. 

There's even an iOS app that lets you define colors with your camera.

6. Eggradients

Eggradients offers great gradients to use in your designs. The tool was created by someone who has both a great perception of color and an interesting sense of humor. 

Each gradient displayed in the shape of an egg has its own thought-provoking name. Examples include "Heartbreak Wozniak" for pale blue and a burgundy gradient called "Tax-Free Income".

When it's your responsibility to create readable CSS, it's best to use standard colors and their names. Thanks to this tool from Brian Mayer Jr., you can easily choose the ones that are perfect for you. 

It contains 17 standards, plus 130 additional colors for CSS. You can easily filter the results by shades of the desired color, or choose from a full rainbow.

8. Canva Color Palette Generator

This is the perfect tool if you want to create a color palette based on a specific image. While other tools offer similar capabilities, Canva is very easy to use: you simply upload an image and the generator immediately returns you a palette of the five primary colors that it contains. Click on the colors you like to copy their HEX value to the clipboard.

Unfortunately, this is where the usefulness of this tool ends. You cannot customize the colors of the created palette. All you can do is save the color values ​​of the created palette, or upload another photo. But other than that, you can use the color wheel if you want to create a palette by hand.

9. Material Design Palette

This tool allows you to select two colors, which are then converted into a full-color palette that is easy to download. 

The company also offers the Material Design Colors tool, which allows designers to view different shades of color along with their corresponding HEX values.

10. ColourCode

ColourCode works similarly to Colordot, which we wrote about earlier, but offers a little more guidance. The tool will change the colors of the palette with each movement of the cursor. 

The most interesting thing about it is that it offers different categories for creating a future palette (analog, triad, monochrome, and so on).

11. Color Calculator

This color calculator is quite easy to use - you just choose a color and one of the combinations, and in return, you get a recommended color palette. 

The great thing about this site is that it goes into great detail about color theory and how it relates to your color choices.

12. HTML Color Code

This is an extensive set of free tools from Dixon & Moe, which includes a color picker with many explanations of color rules, color sets for flat design, Google Material Design schemes, and a large list of standard HTML color names and their codes.

The site also offers tutorials and other resources for web designers. And of course, options for exporting results as HEX codes, HTML styles, CSS, and SCSS.

13. W3Schools: Colors Tutorial

If you're looking for a one-stop solution that includes a color guide along with a range of different tools, then this is a perfect choice. 

Here you can not only learn everything about color theory, the color wheel, and shades but also use different tools, such as Color Converter. This tool will allow you to convert any color into names, HEX codes, RGB, HSL, HWB, and CMYK values.

14. Digital Color Meter (Mac)

Okay, Mac users, this is for you. With Mac's built-in digital color meter, you can easily "grab" a color from anywhere on the screen and get its value in decimal, hexadecimal, or even percentage form. In addition, you can even copy the selected color as text or image.