Tools / Complementary colors
Find your color’s other half.
Complementary colors sit opposite each other on the color wheel. Start with a color, then explore its partner.
Use 3 or 6 HEX digits, with or without #.
Move the slider or tap the wheel. The wheel shows fully saturated hues; your pair keeps your color’s saturation and lightness.
Your complementary pair
1 · Your color
#3B6EA82 · Complement
#A8753BOpposite hues, with the same saturation and lightness.
A complementary pair is not automatically readable as text. Check contrast before using it.
What are complementary colors?
They are hues separated by half a turn on a color wheel. This tool uses the digital RGB/HSL wheel: red pairs with cyan, green with magenta, and blue with yellow. It adds 180° to the hue and keeps saturation and lightness unchanged.
For example, #FF0000 pairs with #00FFFF. A softer red produces a softer cyan. Grey, white and black have no distinct hue, so rotating their hue leaves them unchanged.
Why does a painter’s wheel look different?
A traditional red–yellow–blue wheel commonly pairs red with green, blue with orange, and yellow with purple. This calculator is for screen colors, not a pigment-mixing recipe. Paint results depend on the pigments and the material: test a small swatch before mixing a full batch.
How to use the pair
Try one color across a large area and its complement as a smaller accent. Add a neutral for breathing room. For text and controls, use the contrast checker; opposite hues alone do not guarantee sufficient contrast.
Want combinations chosen by an artist? Explore the Wada palette finder, or browse colors that go together.
Studio
Take the pair to paper
Use your screen palette as a starting point for a color study, then test the pigments on paper.
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This site hands you hex codes. Color Bridge is the deck that shows what an RGB or HTML value becomes as CMYK ink, and which Pantone spot sits nearest it — the translation step between a screen palette and a printed one. Coated and uncoated because the same ink is not the same colour on both stocks.
Listed on Amazon as Pantone GP6102B Color Bridge Guide Set Coated & Uncoated, Multi-Colour
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Pantone
Color Bridge Guide — coated
The coated half on its own — Pantone to CMYK, RGB and HTML in a single fan. The smaller entry point if your work only ever goes onto coated stock.
Listed on Amazon as Pantone Color Bridge Guide Coated | Pantone to CMYK, RGB & HTML Color Matching Fan Deck for Graphic Design, Branding & Print | GG6103B
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Calibrite
ColorChecker Studio spectrophotometer
A spectrophotometer profiles the whole chain — display, printer, projector, scanner — so the colour you picked is the colour that comes out the other end. The full-fidelity option for work that ends up printed.
Listed on Amazon as Calibrite ColorChecker Studio Spectrophotometer for Complete Color Management for Display, Projector, Printer and Scanner Profiling
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Calibrite
Display Plus HL colorimeter kit
A colorimeter calibrates the monitor itself. Worth saying plainly: an uncalibrated screen is the most common reason a palette that looked right on your desk looks wrong everywhere else.
Listed on Amazon as Calibrite Video Photo Kit with Display Plus HL Colorimeter and ColorChecker Passport Video 2, 10,000 Nit Monitor Calibration, Camera Color Matching
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