Want your visual design to stand out? A simple way to do that is to find and use a unique color scheme. And this article will show you how to easily find unconventional color combinations using the color wheel.

Regular text and shapes will stand out more when using a unique color combination. Much more so than if you used standard color combinations like black and white, red and blue, yellow and green, and so forth. And luckily, there’s an easy way to find unconventional color combinations and make your visual design stand out: use the color wheel. This way, you won’t have to blindly guess combinations or use trial-and-error.

Specifically, use the color wheel systematically. Look at the color wheel, cross out the obvious color combinations, and you’ll be left with the unconventional ones. In other words, use the process of elimination to hone in on the more unique color combinations. Yep, those color combinations will be the ones that are “wrong” – but that’s what makes them unconventional. It’s when you break the rules that innovation, remarkableness, and just general uniqueness happens.

Here’s how to use the color wheel to find unconventional color combinations and help make your designs stand out…

1: Identifying Primary Colors

The elementary forehead-slapping-obvious first step. But identifying primary colors is in this guide for completeness sake. Here are the three primary colors:

• Blue
• Red
• Yellow

Okay, that was Colors 101. Why does this matter? It helps to cross out the first list of conventional combinations. Don’t use any combination of primary colors if you want an unconventional color scheme. Any of the primary colors go well together, so no unconventional color combinations are possible here.

See more: Make Your Designs Stand Out with Unconventional Color Combinations