Practical color theory for designers and developers: how color palettes hold together, why contrast rules exist, and what modern color spaces change about the way we build interfaces.
Complementary, triadic, analogous: the color harmony rules are a useful scaffold with a shaky foundation. Here is where the color wheel came from, what it gets right, and when to walk away from it.
7 articles
Blue is cool and red is warm, except that physically it is the exact reverse, and the associations are less universal than the design textbooks suggest.
Roughly one man in twelve does not see your palette the way you do. The fix is not a beige interface. It is making sure color is never the only thing carrying the message.
Fewer than you think, and more than you planned. The gap between 'a palette' and 'a color system' is where most projects lose control.
HSL lies about lightness, and every palette built on it inherits the lie. OKLCH tells the truth, which turns out to change how you build color ramps entirely.
Blue to yellow should pass through green. In sRGB it passes through mud. The cause is a straight line drawn through the wrong color space, and the fix is now one keyword of CSS.
Everyone quotes the number. Far fewer people know it comes from a formula with a fudge factor in it, why the fudge factor is there, and where the formula quietly fails.
Complementary, triadic, analogous: the color harmony rules are a useful scaffold with a shaky foundation. Here is where the color wheel came from, what it gets right, and when to walk away from it.