Three ways to build a palette

Random: press the space bar or New palette for five colors that are spread around the color wheel so they go together. Lock the colors you like and shuffle the rest until the set feels right. From one color: pick a base color and choose a scheme: complementary (the opposite color), analogous (neighbors), triadic (three evenly spaced), split complementary, tetradic (four evenly spaced) or monochrome (one hue in five lightnesses).

Click a swatch to copy its hex code, or copy the whole palette as a HEX list, as CSS variables to paste into a stylesheet, or as JSON.

Contrast check

Choose a text color and a background and the page works out the contrast ratio the way the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) do. Normal text needs at least 4.5:1 to pass level AA and 7:1 for AAA; large text (about 24 px, or 19 px bold) needs 3:1 and 4.5:1. Black on white is the maximum, 21:1. Light grey on white often fails, so check before you pick a text color.

Questions

Can I use these colors anywhere? Yes. Single colors can’t be owned, so use any palette you make in your own designs. Is my palette saved? The latest one is kept in this browser; nothing is uploaded. To pick a color from a picture, use the Color Picker.