Creating a Colour Palette for your Squarespace Website
Having the right colour palette for your website can greatly impact how clients view you and your brand. In fact, there are studies left and right on colour theory and branding so the pressure is definitely on. Despite all this though, I love discovering new colour combinations and playing around with them.
If you are planning to start building your website (or give it a little refresh) and you haven't completely ironed out your colour palette yet, usually my first suggestion would be to work with a brand designer to help you nail down all the important elements when it comes to building a brand identity. However if you would prefer to DIY it (which can be a really fun experience), then here are a few tools and resources to give you some colour inspiration.
Colour Palette Tools
Coolors - I love how simple and easy it is to create a colour palette with this tool. All you need to do is hit the space bar to generate new colours and lock your favourite ones until you get the perfect combination for your brand.
Canva - Canva's palette generator gives you quick and gorgeous palettes in a snap, all you need to do is upload a photo and it creates a colour scheme that matches the image.
Adobe - If you are ready to take your research up a notch, you can check out Adobe Color which is a little more advanced but has a great list of features to help you explore including in-depth colour theory plus the submissions of other users.
Palette Inspiration
Pinterest - When it comes to searching for inspiration, one of my favorite places will always have to be Pinterest. Whether it’s ideas for font combinations, site design or colour palettes, there is always something worth pinning on there.
Color hunt - This open site offers a curated selection of trendy palettes that are ready to be used. All you need to do is search for a specific shade or theme and you should be all set. It also offers a Google Chrome extension so you can get colour inspiration with every new tab you open.
Design Seeds - If you are looking for a palette based on a specific theme, then Design Seeds may be your best bet. The creator, Jessica curates Instagram photos submitted to her and creates gorgeous colour palettes based on them.
I hope these tools and resources help, creating a colour palette can sometimes be a time-consuming process just because it's so much fun to explore all the different options out there but once you've decided which colours are right for your brand then it makes building the rest of your site so much easier!
Choosing Your Squarespace Colour Palette
If you're working with your Squarespace site and trying to decide on or implement a colour palette here's my advice on how to do this as a DIY'er.
Start with one of the presets. If you head to Design > Site Styles > Colours > Edit Palette you'll see there are a choice of presets available. These may not be perfect for you but start with the one that's closest to what you want to achieve, just so you get a sense of how the colour palette system works.
Once you've seen how these colours are applied to your site you can start to think how you'd like to apply your own unique style to your website. The basic colour palette on Squarespace is five colours. These consist of two light (LIGHT, LIGHTEST) and two dark (DARK, DARKEST) and a BRIGHT. The broad formula is that your LIGHT should look good as a font on your DARK, and your LIGHTEST should look good as a font on your DARKEST. Your BRIGHT should work as a colour pop on everything. You can mix it up more than this and even add in more colours if you're feeling adventurous but my advice would be to keep it simple to start with.
I’m compiling a list of colour presets for Squarespace sites, so if you’d like to be the first to get access then just sign up to my newsletter below and I’ll let you know as soon as it’s ready!
