- What is a color wheel and how do I use it?
- A color wheel is a circular diagram that shows relationships between colors. The HueStack color wheel uses the HSB (Hue, Saturation, Brightness) color model to help you select a base color and automatically generate harmonious color combinations. Simply choose your starting color, select a harmony type (complementary, triadic, analogous, etc.), and the tool calculates scientifically balanced color schemes based on color theory principles.
- What's the difference between complementary, triadic, and analogous color schemes?
- Complementary colors are opposite each other on the color wheel (like blue and orange), creating high contrast and vibrant designs. Triadic schemes use three colors evenly spaced around the wheel (like red, yellow, and blue), offering balanced variety. Analogous colors are adjacent on the wheel (like blue, blue-green, and green), creating harmonious, cohesive designs. Each harmony type serves different design purposes - complementary for bold contrast, triadic for balanced vibrancy, and analogous for calm cohesion.
- How do I choose the right color harmony for my project?
- Choose based on your design goals: Use complementary schemes for eye-catching CTAs and hero sections that need high contrast. Triadic harmonies work well for playful, energetic brands and interfaces requiring visual variety. Analogous schemes are ideal for professional sites, dashboards, and designs needing calm sophistication. Split-complementary offers a compromise with good contrast but less tension than pure complementary. Tetradic (four colors) provides the most variety but requires careful balance to avoid overwhelming users.
- Can I use color wheel harmonies with Tailwind CSS?
- Yes! After generating your color harmony, HueStack can convert your colors to complete Tailwind CSS color palettes with all 11 shades (50-950). Export your harmony as CSS custom properties or add directly to your tailwind.config.js. The tool ensures your harmonious colors integrate seamlessly with Tailwind's utility-first approach, giving you access to classes like bg-primary-500, text-accent-700, and border-complementary-300.
- What are split-complementary and tetradic color schemes?
- Split-complementary schemes use a base color plus the two colors adjacent to its complement, offering strong visual contrast with more nuance than pure complementary schemes. For example, if your base is blue, split-complementary would include yellow-orange and red-orange instead of pure orange. Tetradic (also called double-complementary or rectangular) uses two complementary pairs, creating rich, diverse palettes with four colors. These advanced harmonies provide more design flexibility while maintaining color theory balance.
- How does the HSB color wheel differ from RGB or HEX?
- RGB (Red, Green, Blue) and HEX are technical color formats used in code, while HSB (Hue, Saturation, Brightness) is designed for intuitive color selection. HSB makes it easy to adjust color relationships - hue controls the actual color (red, blue, etc.), saturation controls color intensity, and brightness controls lightness. This makes generating harmonies more intuitive than manipulating RGB values. Our color wheel uses HSB internally but exports to HEX, RGB, and HSL formats for easy implementation in your code.
