It is surprising the number of easy to use tools to help you decide a colour scheme that best suits your and your customers’ needs.

To get an idea of the range of colours used you can get a website analysed for its colours. This site http://redalt.com/Tools/I+Like+Your+Colors allows you to put in the url of any site and the main colours are returned from the various CSS style sheets.

The best tool for colour schemes is adobe’s free site http://kuler.adobe.com/ , designers can create a palette and save it for others to see and use. The designers tag their schemes so you can search for  a scheme with key words. Another feature of the site is you can analyse photographs to extract the main colours. There is a good introduction here http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-cs4-design-premium/using-kuler-color-themes/

This site has a slightly easier colour wheel than adobe http://colorschemedesigner.com/