From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A color scheme is the choice of colors used in design for a range of media. For example, the use of a white background with black text is an example of a basic and commonly default color scheme in web design.

Color schemes are used to create style and appeal. Colors that create an aesthetic feeling when used together will commonly accompany each other in color schemes. A basic color scheme will use 2 colors that look appealing together. More advanced color schemes involve several colors mixed together, usually based around a single color; for example, text with such colors as red, yellow, orange and light blue arranged together on a black background in a magazine article.

Color schemes can also contain different shades of a single color; for example, a color scheme that mixes different shades of green, ranging from very light (almost white) to very dark.

Use of the phrase color scheme may also and commonly does refer to choice and use of colors used outside typical aesthetic media and context, although may still be used for purely aesthetic effect as well as for purely practical reasons. This most typically refers to color patterns and designs as seen on vehicles, particularly those used in the military when concerning color patterns and designs used for identification of friend or foe, identification of specific military units, or as camouflage.

A color scheme in marketing is referred to as a trade dress and can be sometimes be copyrighted, such as kodak film, or Tide laundry detergent.[1]

• Advertising
• GUI
  • Microsoft Windows' GUI is set with a default color scheme, but can be customized.
  • Irix 4dwm's GUI uses more color schemes, whose information is stored in files named BaseColorPalette.
• The World Wide Web
  • Microsoft Windows' default color scheme forces webpages without specific color detail to show black text with a white background.
  • Cascading Style Sheets allow easily-editable color schemes to be applied to HTML webpages.
• Publishing
  • Modern magazines use a range of colors in text and imagery which tend not to conform to a specific set of colors throughout the magazine.
• Interior design

• Light-on-dark color scheme
• Dark-on-light color scheme
• Color tool

• COLOURlovers.com - 25,000+ Color Palettes & Color Schemes
• 2006 Trends in Paint Color Schemes
• Color Schemer-Interactive site
• ColorJack: Color Generator