Color palette generator

You can create a color palette using Wixel's free color palette generator by following these simple steps:

• Upload an image to extract colors from it.

• Wait for the color palette maker to pull the most dominant colors from your image and create a harmonious scheme.

• Review the generated palette and make adjustments if needed.

• Once you're happy with the results, download your color palette as a PDF with HEX and HEX values included.

You can also use the color wheel to explore complementary, analogous, or triadic color relationships and fine-tune your selections.

This rule helps create balanced and visually appealing color schemes by dividing color usage into three specific proportions. It’s a guide for how much of each color should appear in your design. Here's how it works:

• 60% dominant color: this is your primary or base color that sets the overall tone and mood. It typically covers backgrounds, large surfaces, and main design elements. Neutral tones often work well as dominant colors because they provide a calm foundation.

• 30% secondary color: this supporting hue adds visual interest and depth without competing with your dominant color. It's commonly used for navigation menus, sidebars, content sections, or secondary design elements that need to stand out but not dominate.

• 10% accent color: this is your pop of color used sparingly to draw attention to key elements like call-to-action buttons, links, icons, or important highlights. The accent color creates focal points and guides the viewer's eye to what matters most.

Apply this rule when using the color palette generator by selecting one dominant hue, one complementary secondary color, and one contrasting accent shade. Explore the impact of the 3 color palette rule next time you use social media templates.

Here's how to choose a color palette that works:

• Define your goal and audience: start by identifying who will see your design and what emotions you want to evoke. If you’re looking for a wedding color palette generator, you’ll need soft tones. If you’re looking for a website color palette generator, you might want to prioritize readability and professional contrast.

• Select your primary color and upload an image: your primary color should reflect your brand or project’s messaging and personality. Upload an image where the primary color is dominant.

• Apply the 60-30-10 rule: once you’ve generated a color palette based on the image, apply this rule to create visual balance.

When choosing a color palette, keep accessibility and contrast in mind. Read more about that on Wix's guide on preparing accessible text and graphics.

A standard color palette should contain 3 to 6 colors for most design projects, with the sweet spot being 4 to 5 colors that include one primary color, one or two secondary colors, and two to three accent colors. Here's why this works:

• 3-4 colors: you need one dominant color that sets the tone, one standard neutral color for text and backgrounds (like black, gray, or white), and one or two accent colors for highlights and calls-to-action. This stripped-down approach is perfect for minimalist brands or simple projects where clarity is paramount.

• 4-5 colors: this combination balances flexibility with consistency and follows the 60-30-10 rule naturally. Your base colors handle the dominant and secondary roles, while accent colors provide pops of contrast where needed.

Once you've built your color palette, test its look across different design contexts like Wixel's  invitation maker, CV maker and more.

A color palette generator helps anyone designing visual assets create harmonious color schemes. Instead of manually selecting and testing color combinations, Wixel’s free color palette generator creates one based on an image you upload.

Create a color palette to:

• Speed up brand identity development: a brand color palette generator helps you explore multiple color combinations quickly. You can upload your logo to Wixle’s color palette generator and it’ll extract the dominant hues with their exact HEX codes, and instantly build a cohesive palette.

• Extract colors from inspiration sources: whether you're designing a wedding invitation, website, or marketing campaign, simply upload an image like a sunset, product shot, or mood board—and you’ll get dominant colors with their HEX codes.

• Test and iterate quickly: apply your generated palette across real projects. If you create an image using the color palette but the coloring isn’t right, you can change color of image using Wixel.

A color palette generator eliminates the technical complexity of color theory for both professionals and complete beginners.

Wixel's free color palette generator stands out as one of the best options for creators and brands because it’s quick and easy to use. With Wixel, you simply need to upload an image (supporting .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .heic, and .svg formats), and our color palette builder generates a custom palette you can fine-tune. Wixel is particularly valuable for brands and creators because of its variety of design tools such as the AI image generator, photo filters, transparent background maker and more.

Wixel’s color palette creator is free to use. You can generate a color palette from an image and preview it before downloading that palette as a PDF. You can also explore free editing and design tools with Wixel, such as the image enhancer, AI image extender and more. Some of these tools are AI first, so they use credits. As a new user, you start with free credits and once those run out, you can upgrade to Wixel Pro.

Creating a color palette from an image online is simple, here’s how:

• Upload your image: Wixel supports .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .heic, and .svg formats perfect for extracting colors from brand logos, product photos, mood boards, or inspiring photography.

• Let Wixel extract colors: the color palette maker processes everything instantly.

• Fine-tune your palette: adjust the color palette to align perfectly with your vision.

• Download and use: download your custom palette as a PDF and use wherever you need.

Pro tip: Choose high-quality source images with distinct, well-lit colors for best results. If you have an image that needs to be edited before use, check out Wixel’s photo editor.

Designers use a brand color palette strategically to communicate personality, build recognition, and influence user emotion and behavior. Color palettes are used to:

• Define the brand system and establish a primary brand color, secondary and accent colors, plus neutrals, tints, and shades.

• Set mood with color psychology and saturation to convey traits (e.g., blues for trust/calm, greens for growth/nature, reds for energy/urgency).

• Create hierarchy and UI states that drive action in CTA, information boxes, warnings and more.

If you want to create a cohesive look for a project, create a logo using Wixel’s AI logo generator, then upload the logo to our free online color palette generator and get a unified color scheme you can use everywhere.

An aesthetically pleasing color palette balances color harmony, proportion, contrast, and psychological cohesion. Here's how you can think like a designer in order to achieve it:

• Use proven harmony systems like monochromatic (single hue with tints/shades for cohesive, calming designs), analogous (adjacent wheel colors found in nature), complementary (opposite colors for vibrant contrast), or triadic (three evenly-spaced colors for balanced tension). Harmonious palettes engage the eye and establish a sense of order, while lack of harmony results in designs that feel either boring (under-stimulating) or chaotic (over-stimulating). Whatever harmonious color combination you choose, the actual choice of color is significant. Read more about color meanings to discover which color foundation will best suit your creative vision.

• Allocate 60% to your dominant/primary color (usually neutral backgrounds), 30% to a secondary color (typography, icons, supporting elements), and 10% to a bold accent color (CTAs, highlights, visual pops). This ratio creates visual hierarchy, prevents overwhelming color combinations, and ensures one color dominates while others support.

• Stick to 2-5 colors maximum to avoid visual clutter. Apply mild contrast across most elements, reserving high-contrast combinations (like complementary pairs) only for elements that must stand out like CTAs, alerts, or key messaging. Balance warm and cool temperatures for visual interest.

Harmonious color palettes evoke balance, calmness, and satisfaction which is something you want to keep in mind when creating important documents. For example, when you create a CV, generate an aesthetically pleasing color palette and keep creating using our resume builder.