The basics of color harmony

Color harmony is the practice of combining colors pleasingly. Setting rules based on the color wheel lets you get reliable combinations without relying on guesswork.

For instance, analogous colors (adjacent hues) feel soft and unified, complementary colors (opposite hues) give strong contrast and energy, and triadic and tetradic schemes are spread evenly around the wheel for balanced variety.

In practice a 60-30-10 ratio is common: one dominant color over a wide area, and the rest as supporting and accent colors. The palette tool above builds all of these from a single base color instantly.