Colour Scheme Experimenting

I’m experimenting with different colour schemes at the moment. So don’t be too confused if this forum looks quite different for a while. I want to test out the colour scheme I’ve mentioned in the thread “Project Future Branding Discussion” (Cyan Cobalt Blue, Olive, Rose, or whatever these colours are called).

Here are the RGB values for the colour scheme that I’ve set up for the Social Future Forum initially:

Primary : 222222 (Text, border, and stuff)
Secondary: f0faff (general background colour)
Tertiary: 00a0b0 (most buttons and links)
Quaternary: 005735 (navigation buttons)
Header background: 112e56
Header primary: b2c3d4
Highlight: ffff4d (highlighted fields and stuff)
Danger: c40000 (see what I did there? ;))
Success: 00aa00
Love: fa225d (like button colour)
Wiki: 408040 (background colour for wiki posts, officially. I guess this is used for links, too)

And here is the triadic colour scheme:
Primary: 032137
Secondary: f0f2ff
Tertiary: 486e88
Quaternary: 973253
Header background: 554d00
Header primary: fff7aa
Highlight: d4ca5a
Danger: 4b0018
Success: 807515
Love: db5e7d
Wiki: 29516d

What is not so good about this scheme is that the green-cyan Social Future Forum clashes with the dark olive header background. I get the idea that a triadic colour harmony might be a bit too much for the modest styling possibilities of this forum.

What might be better is to take 3 adjacent colours centred around cyan cobalt blue. Which is what I have done most recently:

Primary: 042037
Secondary: f0f2ff
Tertiary: 29506d
Quaternary: 403075
Header background: 261758
Header primary: 887caf
Highlight: 88cc88
Danger: c40000
Success: 2d882d
Love: c96474
Wiki: 55aa55

There is a problem with Paletton, the tool I used to create the colour schemes above: It uses the RYB (Red, Yellow, Blue) instead of the RGB (Red, Green, Blue) colour wheel, so the colours displayed there don’t really match the colours with standard RGB codes.

I’ll try a scheme based on azure, violet, and spring green saturated next. So, here’s what I got for that:

Primary: 002244
Secondary: f0f8ff
Tertiary: 007FFF
Quaternary: 5F00FF
Header background: 300080
Header primary: C080FF
Highlight: ffdf00
Danger: ff2000
Success: 00ff7f
Love: ff00bf
Wiki: 00ffff

Next is a more greyish variation that is less saturated: The azure, violet, and spring green greyish colour scheme:

Primary: 10161C
Secondary: ECF0F3
Tertiary: 00592C
Quaternary: 274059
Header background: 5E506D
Header primary: CFB7E7
Highlight: ffdf00
Danger: ff2000
Success: 00ff7f
Love: ff00bf
Wiki: 00ffff

I feel that the violet and spring green somewhat clash with each other. Especially when they come together in the header. It might be a better idea to reduce the colour scheme to azure and spring green only. And thoughts about that?

Ok, so I reduced the base hues to azure and spring green. Saturation is held a bit moderate for the main colours [HSL values]:

Primary: 10161C [210° 27% 9%]
Secondary: ECF0F3 [206° 23% 94%]
Tertiary: 00592C [150° 100% 17%]
Quaternary: 274059 [210° 39% 25%]
Header background: 0073E7 [210° 100% 45%]
Header primary: E1F0FF [210° 100% 94%]
Highlight: ffdf00 [52° 100% 50%]
Danger: ff2000 [8° 100% 50%]
Success: 00ff7f [150° 100% 50%]
Love: ff00bf [315° 100% 50%]
Wiki: 00ffff [180° 100% 50%]

Edit (2015-11-05): It might be better to use HSL values instead of RGB values in the future. There’s a great HSL colour generation tool and a RGB -> HSL converter.