How To Choose A Colour Palette For Your Blog

For those of you who have read Blog Pretty, you will know how important branding your blog is. Branding is the whole concept of putting who you are and how you want to be seen, out there online, while making your work recognisable to others. I wanted to elaborate on one of the areas of branding that you might be stuck on, and that is how to choose a colour palette.
Throughout the years, I've made a lot of different changes to the colours of Flip And Style. For so long I never really had a colour palette worked out. I would just whip up a new design with whatever colours I liked at the time and it never really worked. The colours I used didn't go with the content in my posts, they didn't establish who I was as a blogger and I don't believe they made my blog very memorable. Now though, Flip And Style definitely has a set colour palette. I've taken it through the blog, my photography and all my social media as well. Hopefully it's easy to see!
Just recently, I decided to give Blog Pixie an overhaul and change the colours of my branding. As much as it's not good to change your brand too often, I always feel if you need to re-brand, do it. If your current brand doesn't feel right (or you don't have one at all), a complete refresh can make a big difference to your passion for blogging. The previous hot pink and gold I had for Blog Pixie was fun, but I didn't feel like it was me. So I created a new palette of six colours and I love it.
I want you to be able to have a unique colour palette for your own blog, so I'll be leading you through how to do it.
1. Find a photo you love The first thing you need to is find a photo that inspires you. This could be one of your own blog photos, a photo you've liked on Instagram or one you've spotted on Pinterest. It needs to encompass what you and your blog are all about. The whole vibe, colours and the feeling it evokes.

2. Open it in Adobe Color CC Now this is a website that makes creating a colour palette so simple. Open up Adobe Color CC and click on the little camera icon in the top right corner. Open the photo you've chosen, and it will automatically create a colour palette with the best colours from your photo!
There is a 'Colour Mood' box in the top left corner, where you can click through each option to look at other colour palettes they've created for you from the same photo.

3. Perfect your palette Now that you have a colour palette you like, screenshot the page, crop it down to the palette only and open it up in Photoshop (or a free image editing site like Picmonkey or Canva).
You now have five set colours which you can stay with, however I believe it's helpful to have six colours in your final palette. So now you need to do some adding and subtracting.

If your palette doesn't have any neutrals in it, you'll need to add them in. I always suggest having at least one neutral, preferably two, and I tend to always go with black and grey (white isn't needed as it's a given!). I like to add black in as it's generally the colour of your logo and text, so it's good to see how it works with your other colours.
Something else I suggest adding, however optional, is a metallic like gold, silver or bronze. It's an easy way to make your brand feel more luxurious and exciting. I have an array of metallic textures in my Pretty Textures Kit, available at Creative Market. Whether you'd like a silver glitter or a rose gold foil, you can find so many to choose from in there.
You may need to remove one of the colours Adobe has chosen for you, so you can fit your neutral/s and a metallic into the six final colours.

As you can see, I've easily created a colour palette with three bright colours, two neutrals and a metallic. . . .
And that's it! You now have a colour palette for your blog. Now whenever you change the colours of your blog design, such as the side bar, drop down menu or link hover colours, you'll know exactly what colours to use for your brand. If you need the hex value (eg. #FFFFFF) of a colour from your palette (and you don't have Photoshop), just upload it to Image Color Picker and click on each colour to get the code. 
You can use this colour palette throughout your blog, in your Twitter profile, in any graphics you create and in variations of your logo.
I'd love to see your new colour palette if you create one!


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