If you are in web design, you certainly know that learning to put together colors in a harmonious fashion is one of the most important skills of a Web designer. I have seen ( done :-) ) very poor design with colors that look so painful together.

There are many theories that help to get the right combination of colors. Here are some of them:

Analogous Colors : these are the colors that sit next to each other on the color wheel. For example: red, red-orange, and orange. You can play with the hues and saturation of analogous colors to create a harmonious color scheme.

Complementary Colors :these are those colors that are opposite one another on the color wheel. Ex: blue and orange

Color Triads : by placing an equilateral triangle on the color wheel, you can create a nice color schemes. Ex: green, purple and orange

Of course there are many others. But my 2 cents, to pick the right combination is always a matter of a good sense.

There is a good web application that can be in help for you when choosing your color schemes: The Color schemes generator 2 generates color schemes of several types. Every scheme is based on one (base) color, which is supplemented with additional colors making together the best optical imperssion - using one of the authentic algorithms.

You have to read this (form the gys who create the application):
Important note: This tool doesn't use the standard HSV or HSB model (the same HSV/HSB values ie. in Photoshop describe different colors!). The color wheel used here differs from the RGB spectre used on computer screens, it's more in accordance with the classical color theory. This is also why some colors (especially shades of blue) make less bright shades than the basic colors of the RGB-model. In plus, the RGB-model uses red-green-blue as primary colors, but the red-yellow-blue combination is used here. This deformation also causes incompatibility in color conversions from RGB-values. Therefore, the RGB input (eg. the HTML hex values like #F854A9) is not exact, the conversion is rough and sometimes may produce slightly different color.


You can even download the application to use offline from here: http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/colorscheme2.zip