there were three primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. Mixing any two of these created a secondary color. Secondary colors were violet, green, and orange. These were the standard colors we learned in kindergarten. Additional mixing of the standard colors provided any number of other colors including browns and greys. Ultimately, we arrived at modern palletes of millions of colors. Now go in reverse, almost back to kindergarten. In web page design you can use only 216 colors with any measure of accuracy on the web. Even the "216 web safe colors" may not be accurately reproduced on the vast variety of computers and monitors. What's a color enthusiast to do. Use color for effect. Don't rely on it for your message, only for emphasis. So why study web color? Why not? Besides, even with only 216 colors, it is still more than you had in your crayon box when you were a kid. The possibilities for just two color combinations alone is pretty impressive, not to mention three and four color combinations. They don't all work, of course. That, after all, is the point.
There are many pages on the web about color theory, how to use hexidecimal codes in html and how to get those codes. The purpose of my color pages is to examine the effects of the colors available on the web. The purpose of your page and the audience you intend to reach is an important aspect of choosing colors for your web page. Here are some pages on color and color combinations to expand your own study of color. Just click on a colored square above to get started. For information on more sophisticated color groupings see my intensity pages.
Complete web palettes by number and by name. Colors by name are easier to remember but are generally not web safe (they may dither or change color completely as is the case with 'alice blue').
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