When it comes to interior design, computers are not just for professional decorators. Many online tools can help amateur decorators choose hues, develop interior color schemes, and design entire rooms. Online tools that help you choose interior colors come from many different sources, but most can be grouped into two categories: color generators and color viewers or visualizer tools. Color generators are most helpful for identifying colors and color palettes, incorporating your inputs and preferences. For example, you can upload a photo, and the tool will scan it and tell you what colors are in it. Some online color generators let you choose colors from a color wheel. Others allow you to upload a photo or other image to develop your color schemes. If you are looking for a way to make decorating the perfect room a little easier, try one of these great color generators.
ColorSnap This fun gadget was created by Sherwin-Williams and will allow you to build a palette for any room. Upload any photo as inspiration, and the tool will create a custom color palette with coordinating Sherwin-Williams paint colors. You can create an account and save your palettes for future use. While the idea is to find the perfect Sherwin-Williams paint color, you don't have to be married to using this brand's paint to enjoy playing with this fun tool.
Visualize Color Glidden Paints power this user-friendly color tool that works with an uploaded photo of your own house or a sample image already on the tool. Visualize Color allows you to virtually "paint" a room or create a palette suited specifically to your home. You can easily add color choices to a list to save offline and take into your local paint supply store.
Color Designer To develop a color scheme on this site, this color picker will help you find a tint, play with shade, and experiment with color harmonies. It's perfect if you're hoping to flirt with gradients and color mixing. This site helps web designers, but it's also an excellent tool for home decorators.
Coolors.co Coolors.co is another standalone tool for graphic designers or home decorators. This easy-to-use website allows you to upload any image, pick a starting color and find four more matching colors to create your palette. Once you're done, save your palette until you find the perfect shades. Some features will enable you to adjust saturation, view the colors in "color blindness" mode, and more.
Canva Canva is another tool that allows you to upload your favorite photo from that dream vacation and create a color palette from it. Since Canva isn't associated with a specific company, you can match the colors to any paint brand you like. Once you pick an image, you'll get five colors that all play beautifully together.
Colormind If you don't even know where to start to find the perfect color palette, Colormind can help. This tool comes with pre-made palettes to help get your creative juices flowing. Like many other tools, you can also start from an image and match colors to the hues in the photo.
ColourLovers COLOURlovers offers tools for creating color palettes and patterns, but it's also a vast online community for design lovers worldwide. COLOURlovers is a global community that has nearly 5 million user-generated color palettes. Check out the "Home" tab for user-generated color palettes for interior design. Over 9 million users contribute colors ideas, palettes, and patterns. Membership is free.
Paletton Start from one color and explore the wheel of possibilities. Paletton's user-friendly tool has presets, allows you to randomize, and inspires you to play with color. The page opens up with the tool ready to start picking colors. It has a "color scheme designer" and "color scheme generator" tool to get you instantly into the process of finding a color scheme. This tool is terrific for learning and experimenting with color. Once you see complementary colors you love, pop them into a color-matching tool to find brands closely resembling each shade.
Adobe Color If you weren't sure what analogous, monochromatic, or complementary colors were before now, opening Adobe's web-based color wheel app helps you realize these popular types of colors schemes in seconds. This color wheel app makes color play easy. Use their presets or move one of their preset choices on the color wheel to a color that you prefer. Once you've settled on a color scheme you like, this color picker gives you the RGB values of the colors, which you can provide to a paint vendor for paint matching.
Benjamin Moore's Personal Color Viewer If you plan on making interior changes that include repainting the walls, starting with a color picker from a paint manufacturer eliminates several steps, making your interior design process an easier task. This tool from Benjamin Moore is best if you're looking to paint walls and trim. Although you can pick three colors, they are listed explicitly as "walls," "wainscoting," and "trim." If you can look beyond those labels, you can find three colors that work well in a room, and the app "repaints" a photo you upload or uses one of the sample photos they have for different types of rooms, like the bedroom, kitchen, and more.
Color Palette Generator Degraeve's tool is perfect for this task for designers working from a photo for inspiration. Enter the URL for the reference photo, and the color palette generator extracts the prevailing colors from the image, giving you the RGB values. It works fast and efficiently, taking the guesswork out of color matching.