Color is a significant part of any website; even black and white are color choices that communicate a lot about your personality and brand. And there’s endless possibility, with infinite options for tone and hue. How do you choose a color, let alone an entire color palette?
Lucky for you, you have 24-7 access to a free color library with thousands of palettes for any mood or style. It’s called nature, and all you have to do to find it is look out the window — or at these excellent nature photographers.
Beyond black and white
Basic black and white will always make for a clean website, but there can be a lot more to monochrome and minimalism. At Explorers, photographer Christopher Michael captures some penguins who have a lot to teach us about the power of adding a pop of color…
Want to identify the exact color in a photo and get the color code you’ll need to apply it on your website? There are lots of free tools available.
… while Shoot From the Trip’s Dylan Jones shares a shot from the Dolomite Mountains showing us that a monochrome palette can have a lot more depth than we might think.
High contrast!
Sharply contrasting colors add power and dynamism to a website. These Northern Gannetts soaring over a turbulent sea, captured by Bob Montgomerie at the American Ornithological Society, are a study in creamy whites juxtaposed with dusky purples…
… and Chris Spiker’s watercolor of a trio of Rainbow Bee Eaters shows us that nature has something for the most bold and brash among us as well.
Ready to explore color in more depth? Automattic designer Kjell Reigstad has a great overview of the principles of color harmony, and over at wordpress.com/go you’ll find advice on everything from choosing the best color scheme for your brand to understanding color systems like RGB and CYMK.
Gentler gradients
Nature isn’t just birds; if fauna brings us bold and bright, flora teaches us that color can be softer, too, both in the shades themselves and in how they relate. Anita of Anita’s Images shares photos of some of the unique plants that surround her in Malta, with purples and greens flowing into and out of one another…
… and Celia of the eponymous Celia in Tokyo brings us cherry blossoms that teach us how very different colors can harmonize if they’re all of a similar softness …
… while in England, Pete Hillman’s macro photos of moss give us a palette that’s warmly cheerful.
For more color inspiration, look through the Nature or Photography topics and take a walk through the natural world from the comfort of your computer.
Looking for more ways to play with the color on your site? Upgrade to WordPress.com Personal, Premium, or Business for advanced customizing tools.
I love this! Color is so important but can be really overwhelming. I love the nature comparisons!
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Love this color inspiration! Nature is so beautiful! Great article!
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Thanks, a helpful article about choosing a natural colour palette for your website. I used our cover photo and some of the tools you mention to pick out a colour scheme. Thank you.
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How did you incorporate those color circles? That’s the coolest thing ever! I love that you picked so much of our natural environment
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Those are separate images that I made using a free online tool called Picmonkey, to make it easier to see what a color palette based on each image might look like.
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You make it look so simple. Just what I needed. Thanks!
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I love this, learned alot from this article
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Thank you, we so often ignore what’s right in front of us.
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Neat! Colour palettes based on nature all seem so calming.
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This is so cool! I love it!
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Thank you this was so helpful!
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👍👍👍… very interesting… colors are very important and one should actually take time to see the effect of varying or changing them before finally selecting a color or combination of colors
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This is such a new way of looking at colour combinations… I love it!
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Wow, that’s awesome! Thanks for sharing!
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Thanks so much for this article. Nature is so generous.
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I follow a birder group on facebook that constantly has amazing photos of the most colorful birds from all over the world. I totally sample from them for my design projects.
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Thanks for this post. Great ideas and something I need to check out!
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Nicely written. I would usually opt for the easy way out when choosing colors for my blog. But this has thought me a few things and showed me resources that can help my color shades. Thanks
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Awesome article! I Use this technique for my art but never though about using it to give a color scheme to my blog or website! Great graphics too!
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Yeah, that was interesting for me as well. I always just threw together what I thought looked okay.
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This was a great article. Thanks for shedding light yet another way one can draw inspiration from nature!
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This is original and so great! I’m going to need to add some of these great colors to my blog! thanks
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Wow I never thought of this! Love the comparison of colors and birds!
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Very helpful article, loved this❣
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It is tough choosing a palette for art, let alone a house. But a blog, well now we know what to do. Thanks.
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This is such a beautiful post about getting inspiration from nature, loved it!
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I really appreciated this post because my blog’s main picture is of some seagulls (even though my content has nothing to do with birds, but whatever.) and I’ve been having a hard time with the color palette.
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Very helpful. More on this please.
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This is such a great post, it’s so helpful and interesting!
LikeLiked by 14 people
I always appreciate when someone can teach me to see differently, or anew. I love this! Thank you.
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I am enjoying all those color palettes. I especially like the lavender from Anita’s Images. I also really appreciate the contrast between the yellow and light pink from Celia in Tokyo. A resource I like to use to save my favorite color palettes is Coolors. It’s a very handy app. Thank you for the great article!
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