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Kindly point towards theory/material to read for understanding colors and what makes a good color combinations. Mind it that I am not interested in say "Color combinations for web application" etc. More of the lines of say "Colors and humans".

Material free to read is what i am looking for.


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Great question, but I fear this is one of the topics where no short answer exists, as there are simply too many things to consider and too many nuances. I'd be interested in an answer anyway. –  Joachim Sauer Dec 17 '08 at 14:50
Actually, you're a lot better off asking that question on art forums. Colors is a very very wide and complex subject in itself. –  Loki Dec 17 '08 at 15:03
@Loki: agreed, but there's some minimum that can be useful for developers and therefore is a good question for this forum. –  Joachim Sauer Dec 17 '08 at 16:11

6 Answers 6

up vote 4 down vote accepted

Color and humans is a very complex topic. Scientists do not completely understand how we humans perceive color. (See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychophysics)

There are a lot good books out there but some free resources I use:






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In addition to the links I'd like to post my way of selecting pleasant colors:

  1. NEVER ever use pure colors. Even if you want a pure color, don't!. If you want a strong bright green for example don't use 00ff00. Use something like 10e013 instead.

  2. If you have one color that you like, and you want another one that fits to the first open a graphic program. Go to the color picker, type in your color and then switch to HSV mode. Then adjust either one of Hue, Saturation or Lightness. Don't modify two or all parameters, just one. That makes sure the color you choose is perceptually related to the color you've started with.

  3. If you have no idea what color to start with get a classic masterpiece of painting from the net. Blur it a bit and then pick some nice colors from it. If you use some common sense it's hard not to end with pleasant colors this way.

Just to give you an example: I've just picked these colors:

alt text

From this painting:


I know - it's not exaclty what you've asked for, but I learned these tricks the hard way.

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Great rules of thumb for those of us who aren't designers at all and still want to avoid causing eye cancer. –  Joachim Sauer Dec 17 '08 at 16:10
Avoiding eye cancer was the reason why I came up with these rules (with a lot of help from graphical artists btw... ) –  Nils Pipenbrinck Dec 17 '08 at 18:00
Thanks for the ans nils :) –  Ankur Gupta Dec 18 '08 at 6:26

See the Color Scheme Generator, Color Wizard, Color Combinations. They all have some theory or rationale.

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Some theory here:


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Robin Williams' "The Non-designer's Design Book" is a must-read for anyone who needs to prepare material for publication (including software UI), and includes a chapter on colour:


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Information Visualization by Colin Ware:

Information Visualization, Colin Ware

Contains much more than just color theory. But it's a great academic resource for understanding some basics of human perception and how to make sure your designs work well.

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