Which colours to use?

I love colour. I use purple, green and brown pens for everything except very formal things. I dress in colour (mostly brown, purple, red range) and I like to have colour around me.

So when I was setting up this blog I of course needed to decide on colours to use. My default is purple and maroon but I decided to go for something different – I wanted some energy and contrast so that links stand out.

I used a fantastic free feature on kuler which extracts a palette from a photo. You need to register to be able to save palettes and you also need flash player for it to work (free and easy to install).

I browsed my recent photos for some with the bright and energized feel that I wanted and then tried them out. I chose the deep option because I thought those would be easier to read than the bright. You can also customize by moving one of the dots to a different part of the photo.

The palette I’ve used is based on the vegetable photo. You can see the palette I saved from it here. If you want to use the palette precisely then the website gives you the colour formula in various formats eg for paint and for printing.

I could play on this site for hours and a visit always gives me a lift if I’m feeling too greytone.