What is Color Wheel [A Guide to Use Colors in Design]

Choosing the right colors is one of the most important—and most misunderstood—parts of design. Whether you’re creating a website, social media graphic, logo, or marketing material, your color choices directly affect user perception, engagement, and brand recall.

This is where the color wheel comes in.

In this guide, we’ll break down how the color wheel works, explain different color combinations, and show how designers use an online color wheel tool to create visually balanced and professional designs in minutes.

What is a Color Wheel?

A color wheel is a visual representation of colors arranged in a circular format based on their chromatic relationship. It helps designers understand how colors relate to one another and how to combine them effectively.

Modern digital design primarily uses an RGB color wheel, which is ideal for websites, apps, and digital graphics. Each color on the wheel represents a unique hue, which can be adjusted using saturation and luminance to create endless variations.

How to use Color Wheel and mix match colors?

The color wheel lets you create a strong color story for all your designs. No matter how great your design is if the colors you chose do not go well with each other or with the overall tone of your business, it is never going to have the right impact on your target audience. For example, you would not use complementary colors for a luxury product, and you wouldn’t use muted tones for a carnival like event.

Let’s take a look at how you can use color wheel picker to create just the right palette for your website, office, banner, or even your brand marketing material.

• Choose a color: On the color picker, choose a color around which you want to build your palette by either entering the HTML color code in the first field or simply by clicking on the desired color on the wheel. You can click and drag the dot till you are happy with the color.
• Choose the type of color combination: There are six different types (harmonies) that you can choose from – complementary, monochromatic, analogous, triadic, tetradic, or pentadic. However, for the creative souls, there is also an option to choose a custom combination.
• Check out the results: Once you have chosen the type of color combination you like, you would have the entire palette at the bottom for you to observe how they interact with each other. You can get the exact HTML color codes for all the colors in the color palette so that you can use the exact combination on your piece of design.

The concept of color theory came to light a few centuries after Newton’s definition and creation of the first Color Wheel. The wheel of color gradually gave rise to the concept of color theory. Today, the complementary color wheel and general concepts of color theory are used by both artists and designers for their respective professions.

What Are the Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Colors?

A color cycle has about 15 colors. They can roughly be categorized into three categories:

• Primary colors: Primary colors are the main colors of a color wheel. For color wheel online design, these include red, green and blue. A red, yellow and blue palette is used for artistic works. Primary colors are unique because they cannot be created by mixing other colors of the color wheel.
• Secondary colors: Secondary colors are created when two primary colors of the color wheel online are mixed with each other. There are six colors that qualify as secondary.
• Tertiary colors: These colors are formed when a primary color is mixed with a secondary color. Just like secondary there are six colors that are tertiary.

How to Differentiate Color Based on Color Temperature?

Color temperature divides colors on a wheel of color into roughly two types: warm and cool. Color temperature is the feeling of warmth or coolness of a color. It is not based on literal temperature but rather how a color affects the viewer psychologically. For example, the association of Ferraris being hot looking cars is more due to the liberal use of red rather than the design. A blue Ferrari does not have the same feel.

The difference between warm and cool colors is explained through the psychology of association which makes the viewer develop different feelings. For example, yellow is termed as a warm color due to its association with the sun and green is termed as cool due to its association with trees. According to color temperature, warm colors evoke warmth and raise energy and cool colors bring about a feeling of serenity and isolation.

Colors from red to yellow are considered warm and colors from blue to green/purple are considered cool.

How to Apply the Color Wheel or Color Circle?

Professional designers use the RGB color wheel palette to design the aesthetics of online websites. The color scheme of a website, often called the color harmony, is made by combining various colors of the wheel in different color combinations. Usually, there are 5 kinds of color combinations that are used by designers for the color scheme of a website. Here they are.

1. Complementary color: Complementary colors are on opposite sides of the color wheel. Using these colors provides a bright and prominent feel. This combination has an extremely high contrast and can often be termed as loud.
2. Triadic color: Triadic colors use three opposing colors from the different sides of the color wheel. Triadic is rarely used since balancing using three opposing colors is difficult. Just like complementary colors triadic creates bright, contrasted color schemes.
3. Monochromatic color: Monochromatic colors use the three different shades, tones and tint of the same base color. Monochromatic color schemes are usually soothing to the eye and provide a great amount of versatility and harmony to the designed website.
4. Analogous color: This color scheme uses three neighboring colors of the color wheel. It provides the same versatility as the above but analogous colors are extremely hard to balance together and making the colors harmonious in nature is a challenge.
5. Tetradic color: This color scheme uses 4 colors from the color wheel and uses colors that are evenly separated from each other. Tetradic color is the hardest to balance and they often create a very bold color scheme. It works best if one of the four colors is used as the dominant color and the rest accentuate.

Base colors of the color wheel are never used directly for a color wheel. They tend to be crude and lack versatility as background or foreground colors. They are changed with the help of the following mixes. These give a base color the needed versatility and aesthetic appeal that can go a long way in deciding the psychological perception of a website.

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What are Shades, Tint and Tones?

Shades, tint and tones of colors are created by adding black, white and grey to a base color respectively.

1. Shades: Shades are created when black is mixed with a color from the wheel. Shades create a deep and bold color. Using shades extensively can be overpowering.
2. Tint: Tints are created when white is mixed with a color from the wheel. Tints are great when mixed with warm colors as they decrease the intensity of a color and help in balancing it out.
3. Tones: Tones are created when a color is mixed with gray and it ends up creating a subtle version of the original color. Tones create excellent color mixes and shows gentle but intense iterations. Tones can end up creating an excellent color scheme.

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What is Hue, Saturation and Luminance?

Hue is a word that is commonly thrown around with reference to color. Hues are defined as the constituent colors that can be found on a color wheel. When one is using a color wheel or a color theory picker, one can adjust the saturation and luminance of a hue. Each hue on the online color wheel has a different innate value. Yellow, for instance, is lighter than blue. Color theory picker is very easy to use to get the desired results.

Saturation is the purity of a color while luminance is the brightness a color exhibits.

To use color theory properly, a rule of thumb is to adjust the saturation and luminance of a base hue and then mix with either shades, tints or tones. This ensures that the composite nature of your chosen colors is properly maintained.

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Why Designers Use a Color Wheel for Branding and Marketing

Color impacts perception more than most people realize. The right color combinations can:

• Improve brand recognition
• Increase user engagement
• Influence purchasing decisions
• Create emotional alignment with your audience

That’s why professional designers rely on color theory tools rather than intuition alone.

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How to Create Better Color Palettes in Minutes?

Whether you’re designing a website, social media graphic, poster, or brand identity, using a structured color system saves time and improves results.

Try Pixazo’s Color Wheel Tool to explore color combinations, generate balanced palettes, and design with confidence.

Understanding color theory isn’t about memorizing rules—it’s about using the right tools to make smarter design decisions.

Frequently Asked Questions about Color Wheel

1. What is the purpose of a color wheel in design?

The color wheel helps designers understand relationships between colors and create balanced, visually appealing color combinations. It acts as a guide for choosing colors that complement, contrast, or harmonize with each other in design projects.

2. Why should designers use a color wheel instead of choosing colors randomly?

Using a color wheel removes guesswork from color selection. It ensures consistency, visual harmony, and emotional alignment, which are critical for branding, marketing, and user experience design.

3. Which color combination works best for websites?

There is no single best combination, but monochromatic and analogous color schemes are commonly used for websites because they are easy on the eyes and maintain visual consistency. Complementary colors are often used sparingly for call-to-action elements.

4. How does a color wheel help with branding?

A color wheel helps brands select a primary color and build supporting palettes around it. This creates a consistent visual identity across websites, advertisements, social media graphics, and marketing materials.

5. What is the difference between RGB and traditional color wheels?

Traditional color wheels are often based on red, yellow, and blue for artistic use, while RGB color wheels are optimized for digital screens. RGB color wheels are preferred for websites, apps, and online graphics.

6. Can beginners use an online color wheel tool?

Yes, online color wheel tools are designed to be beginner-friendly. Users can select a base color and instantly generate harmonious palettes without needing deep knowledge of color theory.

7. How do shades, tints, and tones improve color palettes?

Shades add depth by darkening colors, tints soften colors by lightening them, and tones mute intensity using gray. Together, they help designers create more versatile and professional-looking palettes.

8. What role do hue, saturation, and luminance play in color selection?

Hue defines the color itself, saturation controls its intensity, and luminance determines brightness. Adjusting these values helps designers fine-tune colors for readability, accessibility, and emotional impact.

9. Are color wheels useful for non-designers?

Yes. Marketers, content creators, entrepreneurs, and product teams use color wheels to create visually consistent presentations, social media posts, ads, and brand assets.

10. How does Pixazo’s color wheel tool simplify color selection?

Pixazo’s color wheel allows users to pick a base color, choose a harmony type, adjust hue, saturation, and luminance, and instantly copy exact color codes, making professional color selection fast and reliable.