10+ Best Articles on Colors
The most useful articles on colors from around the web—beginners to advanced—curated by thought leaders and our community. We focus on timeless pieces and update the list whenever we discover new, must-read articles or videos—make sure to bookmark and revisit this page.
Top 5 Colors Articles
At a glance: these are the articles that have been most read, shared, and saved on colors by Refind users in 2023 so far.
How to ...?
How to pick the least wrong colors
An algorithm for creating color palettes for data visualization
How to pick more beautiful colors
Choosing good colors for your charts is hard. This article tries to make it easier.
«There’s no need to rely on hues from all around the color wheel like ⬤⬤⬤⬤⬤⬤ for your visualizations. It will look more professional – and therefore more trustworthy – when it only uses a few hues and their neighbors.»
Short Articles
Short on time? Check out these useful short articles on colors—all under 10 minutes.
OK, OKLCH: a color picker made to help think perceptively—Martian Chronicles, Evil Martians’ team blog
We designed the UI of the OKLCH Color Picker & Converter with education in mind as the driving design principle. Beyond being a handy tool, we aim to speed up familiarity and adoption of OKLCH and…
Poline — esoteric color palette generator
poline is lightweight, dependency free and fast JavaScript function written in TypeScript. It draws lines between anchors over polar coordinates to generate pleasing color palettes.
How Colors Change the Perception of Interior Spaces
Some possibilities to change environments with colors or contrasts, confusing proportions.
How we designed an accessible color palette from scratch
We knew that, although meticulously crafted, our current 7-color design system (in other words, our secondary branding colors) was very…
Designing accessible color systems
How we designed a color system with hand-picked, vibrant colors that also met standards for accessibility and contrast.
Long Articles
These are some of the most-read long-form articles on colors.
The colors of game design
What if game design could be summed up into four “primary colors” and their mixtures? This simple tool might help you organize your ideas.
How colours affect the way you think
Our world is awash with a rainbow of colours, but certain shades can have a surprising impact on our ability to concentrate, our mood and even our taste.
«And if you want a child to concentrate, you might consider painting a classroom in a vivid palette and so bolster their reading scores.»
Getting WCAG color contrast right
Actionable tips on how to nail WCAG 2.1 color compliance.
Re-approaching Color
We are sharing our approach to color & the tools we used to generate our colors. Find our new color tool here at ColorBox.io
A Guide To Modern CSS Colors With RGB, HSL, HWL, LAB and LCH — Smashing Magazine
In this article, we’ll take a look at the best ways to handle colors in CSS today, some tips for using them in a design system, and what we can expect from our colors in the not-too-distant future.
Publications
We monitor hundreds of publications, blogs, newsletters, and news sources in Colors, including:
UX Collective
Curated stories on user experience, usability, and product design. By @fabriciot and @caioab.
Smashing Magazine 🇺🇦 🏳️🌈
An online magazine for designers and web developers. Questions? We've got your back: @SmashingSupport, @SmashingConf. Curated by Iris, Vitaly and the team.
Stripe
Stripe is a global technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet. Help: @stripesupport. Read: @stripepress. Status: @stripestatus.
ArchDaily
The best #architecture in the world – for architects, by architects. More: @ArchDaily_ES, @ArchDailyBR, @ArchDailyMX
BBC News (World)
News, features and analysis from the World's newsroom. Breaking news, follow @BBCBreaking. UK news, @BBCNews. Latest sports news @BBCSport
What is Refind?
Every day Refind picks the most relevant links from around the web for you. Picking only a handful of links means focusing on what’s relevant and useful. We favor timeless pieces—links with long shelf-lives, articles that are still relevant one month, one year, or even ten years from now. These lists of the best resources on any topic are the result of years of careful curation.
How does Refind curate?
It’s a mix of human and algorithmic curation, following a number of steps:
- We monitor 10k+ sources and 1k+ thought leaders on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
- In addition, our users save links from around the web using our Save buttons and our extensions.
- Our algorithm processes 100k+ new links every day and uses external signals to find the most relevant ones, focusing on timeless pieces.
- Our community of active users gets the most relevant links every day, tailored to their interests. They provide feedback via implicit and explicit signals: open, read, listen, share, mark as read, read later, «More/less like this», etc.
- Our algorithm uses these internal signals to refine the selection.
- In addition, we have expert curators who manually curate niche topics.
The result: lists of the best and most useful articles on hundreds of topics.
How does Refind detect «timeless» pieces?
We focus on pieces with long shelf-lives—not news. We determine «timelessness» via a number of metrics, for example, the consumption pattern of links over time.
How many sources does Refind monitor?
We monitor 10k+ content sources on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
Which sources does Refind monitor on colors?
We monitor hundreds of sources on colors, including UX Collective, Smashing Magazine 🇺🇦 🏳️🌈, Stripe, ArchDaily, BBC News (World), and many more.
Can I submit a link?
Indirectly, by using Refind and saving links from outside (e.g., via our extensions).
How can I report a problem?
When you’re logged-in, you can flag any link via the «More» (...) menu. You can also report problems via email to hello@refind.com
Who uses Refind?
200k+ smart people start their day with Refind. To learn something new. To get inspired. To move forward. Our apps have a 4.9/5 rating.
Is Refind free?
Yes, it’s free!
How can I sign up?
Head over to our homepage and sign up by email or with your Twitter or Google account.