While there is no denying the importance of text-based content, visual data helps get your message across with increased success. Infographics, GIFs, graphs, charts, and other shareable images can immediately catch your audience’s attention and enhance the legibility of your reports, blogs, social media posts, or branding.
Picking the right colors is an integral part of this equation. In fact, according to a study, adjusting colors and other elements can improve conversions by 24%!
Colors help to define the identity and tone of your website design and branding efforts. Whether designing a logo, building a brand, or creating social media collateral, it might be a good idea to use Hex color codes to guide your work.
Hex color codes allow designers to come up with some quality color combinations, allowing them to reflect brand personality with a suitable color scheme.
Read ahead to find out what Hex color codes are, why you should use them, and how they can help you.
Introduction To Hex Colors And Codes
Hex colors can be easily found online, helping users select specific colors for their website, logos, etc. They assign an alphanumeric value, called a code, to each color.
Actual codes represent a color’s green, blue, and red components and direct your computer to create the colors you want. Hex color codes start with “#”, followed by a six-character combination of numbers and letters that symbolize a color shade. For instance, the color code for black is #000000.
These are incredible, as you can edit codes to come up with particular color shades. For instance, if you slightly edit the white code, you can get an off-white shade. Similarly, you can add a blue tint to a white one with the #eeffff code.
An alternative to hex colors is using generic names like orange, blue, and red. However, everyone perceives these colors somewhat differently; each has hundreds of unique shades, and not every one of them has a name we remember.
So, why not use Hex codes to arrive at the exact shade of these colors that you want to use?
There are a total of 256^3 (16,777,216) color combinations in the #RRGGBB notation as every color value GG, RR, BB has 256 different values.
It is also important to note that the latest browsers support transparency, resulting in a completely new color code set in the #AARRGGBB form. In this case, you can find 256^4 (4,294,976,296) color codes. However, keep in mind that transparency does not indicate the presence of color because it doesn’t change the shade in any way. It only adds information and increases color code availability depending on the level of transparency or opacity.
Reasons For Using Hex Color Codes
One of the best ways to distinguish between various colors is with the use of hex color codes. There are some significant benefits of using Hex codes for your website design instead of color pickers built into your software:
Accuracy
You can use them to come up with pretty much any shade and color by altering the green, blue, or red values that make it up.
But if you use plain old numbers to represent colors instead of codes, every green, blue, or red value between 0 and 255 could have 1, 2, or 3 digits. This way, the number could be three to nine digits long, making it difficult for humans as well as machines to figure out which shade it’s referring to.
Hex color codes put an end to this confusion once and for all. They enable you to significantly reduce the chances of error because every color code is unique and uniform, with six symbols each.
Use With Any Design Tool
You can choose from over 16 million unique colors, using converters and color pickers to create hex color codes. You can safely use these colors to create graphic emails, Instagram posts, or website designs. The app or program you use should have a color selection tool that allows you to enter the hex codes and select the right one for your needs.
As a developer, it can be beneficial to know how hex color codes work. It can significantly enhance your coding skills and knowledge, which will help you use image manipulation software because they use the same encoding.
Consistency
With Hex colors, you can track the exact shades you are using on your website or UX design. It is easier and much faster to select similar colors using the color picker in your software instead of finding the specific hex codes. It may seem harmless at the time, but once you have your web pages ready, they won’t look very consistent or cohesive. The audience will see a webpage in close but distinctive shades of blue, for example.
However, with a Hex code, you never have to worry about this problem.
Display Standardization
Using Hex codes gives you an invaluable understanding of how colors work on a screen, which is essential for web designing. It provides insight into the way your computer interprets codes and displays various colors. Once you’ve figured out how to mix colors and come up with new ones using the Hex codes, the sky’s the limit. This also ensures that the colors appearing on the users’ screens are precisely the ones you want.
Using RGB Color To Understand Hex Codes
One of the best ways to start understanding hex codes is to first learn about the RGB colors. The red, blue, and green lights behind your screen determine the RGB numbers and the colors you see on the front.
You can alter these numbers to indicate the intensity of that specific color you want for the video display unit.
According to the RGB color system, colors are displayed as RGB (255, 0, 0), where the first number defines the red value, the second the green value, and the third the blue value. The number 255 gives the highest possible color concentration, while 0 shows no color representation.
There is no blue or green present in the above case, but it has the brightest red. To just get blue, use the combination RGB (0,0,255), and for green use RGB(0,255,0). If you want other colors, use a color value combination accordingly. An online hex color generator can help you explore all possible colors and find their hex codes.
As a developer, it can be advantageous to know the workings of hex color codes. It can significantly enhance your coding skills and knowledge, which will help you use image manipulation software because they use the same encoding.
Reading Hex Color Codes
Understanding the RGB system is important to move on to hex codes using a simple formula. Any value between 1 and 9 is stated numerically, but letters are used instead of 10 or above. For instance, A=10, B=11, etc.
To calculate the hex number, you can follow the steps below:
- Multiply the first number or letter by 16
- Multiply the second number or letter by 1
- Get a value by adding the two totals
For instance, the number 83 has a Hex value of 131:
- (8×16=128)
- (3×1=3)
- (128+3=131)
You can use this concept in the case of letters, too. For instance, FF=225 as 15 represents the letter F that you multiply by 16 and 1 (since there are two Fs), and then add the two results together to get 255. Note that 255 represents the bright red of the RGB value 255.
Difference Between Hex Codes And RGB
Programmers usually prefer Hex codes due to their predictability factor. These codes always have six digits, regardless of the color, while RGB values can have numbers ranging between three and nine.
It isn’t necessary to create web designs with hex codes. For HTML color codes, you can also opt for RGB values and color names.
Let’s have a look at the HTML for a webpage with an aquamarine background:
- RGB color code:<div style=”background-color:rgb(127, 255, 212)”></div>
- Hex color code:<div style=”background-color:#7FFFD4″></div>
- Color name code:<div style=”background-color:aquamarine”></div>
You don’t really need to worry about finding the correct RGB code or name for the color you want to use. It is best to use a color hex wheel converter or selector to reduce the chances of mistakes. This decreases the possibility of a developer messing up your website, as they try to do all the conversions themselves and turn a potentially good web page into a disaster.
How To Choose A Color Scheme
Whatever project you undertake, one of the best ways to choose the right colors is by using a color palette tool that lets you search by:
- Style
- Color
- Hex Values
- Keyword
- Schemes based on trends
Such a tool also gives you the liberty to randomly pick colors and create your own scheme. Once you’ve selected the color palette you want to use, communicate it to your designers, or if you are the designer, get approval from your bosses.
Here are a few color design tips you can follow before choosing a palette:
- Look at the context
- Check the color wheel
- Pick a triadic, split complementary, or monochromatic colors
- Don’t just stick to the presets
If the color selection needs to be tweaked, go back to the color tool and play with it until you fight more shades that fit. And then get to work on your project.
These hex codes can be used in paid tools like Photoshop and free design apps like Canva. Make collages, create shapes, make a gradient, check color contrasts and fix their brightness, saturation, temperature, and hue until you achieve perfection.
Remember to document the hex codes used; in fact, make them a part of your brand book or style guide so you never have to worry about finding them again.
Conclusion
To sum it up, it is essential to remember that the Hex colors can be handy for designing your digital assets. They are easier to use than the RGB codes due to their set 6-character values.
Furthermore, you can generate website color codes for any color and control its opacity and intensity to match your brand’s color scheme perfectly.
Since it is essential to be consistent in the colors representing your brand, you must understand what the hex codes mean. All in all, Hex codes can save you time when you don’t want to meddle with more complicated color combinations that include cyan, magenta, etc., and RGB is good enough.
Here is an excellent Hex Color Code Generator to get started with.
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