🎨 Color Palette Generator
Generate beautiful color palettes with one click.
What is this tool?
The Color Palette Generator is a free online tool that creates beautiful, harmonious color schemes for your design projects. Whether you are designing a website, creating a brand identity, painting, or working on any visual project, this tool helps you discover color combinations that work well together. Color theory is the foundation of good design. Certain color combinations naturally look pleasing together because of their positions on the color wheel. Complementary colors (opposite on the wheel) create high contrast and vibrancy. Analogous colors (adjacent on the wheel) create serene and comfortable designs. Triadic colors (evenly spaced) offer vibrant but balanced contrast. Tetradic colors form a rectangle, giving rich visual variety. Monochromatic palettes use variations of a single hue for a clean, unified look. This generator lets you pick a base color and instantly see harmonious palettes based on these classic color theory relationships. You can generate random palettes for inspiration, lock colors you like, and export hex codes for use in CSS, design tools, or any creative software. Everything runs locally in your browser.How it works
The generator uses the HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness) color model because it closely matches how humans perceive color relationships. The color wheel is based on hue, which ranges from 0° to 360°. For each harmony type, the tool calculates the hues of companion colors based on their angular relationship to the base color: Complementary adds 180° to the base hue (two opposite colors). Analogous uses ±30° from the base (three adjacent colors). Triadic uses +120° and +240° (three evenly spaced colors). Split-complementary uses +150° and +210° (a soft contrast to complementary). Tetradic uses +90°, +180°, and +270° (four colors forming a rectangle). Square uses +90° increments (four evenly spaced colors). After calculating the companion hues, the tool generates 5 shades for each color by varying lightness from 20% to 90% while keeping saturation constant. The result is a palette of related colors with varying brightness levels. Colors are converted from HSL to hex for display and copying. The random generator picks a random hue and harmony type for creative inspiration.How to use
- Pick a base color using the color picker.
- Choose a harmony type (complementary, analogous, etc.).
- Generate random palettes for inspiration.
- Click any color to copy its hex code.
- Export the complete palette for your design.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best color harmony for web design?
Analogous palettes work well for most websites because they create a calm, cohesive feel. For accent colors (buttons, highlights), use a complementary color to make them stand out. Triadic palettes work for vibrant, playful designs.
How do I copy a color hex code?
Simply click any color swatch in the generated palette, and its hex code is copied to your clipboard automatically. You can also copy all hex codes at once using the Copy All button.
What is HSL and why does this tool use it?
HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness) is a color model that matches how humans think about color. It makes it easy to create harmonious palettes because the hue directly corresponds to position on the color wheel. The tool converts HSL to hex for practical use.
Can I generate palettes from a photo?
This tool generates palettes from a base color or randomly. For extracting palettes from images, a dedicated color extraction tool would be needed. However, you can pick the dominant color from your image as the base and generate harmonious companions here.
Tips & Advice
For accessible web design, always check color contrast ratios. The WCAG standard requires at least 4.5:1 contrast for normal text and 3:1 for large text. Use the 60-30-10 rule for balanced palettes: 60% dominant color (usually a neutral), 30% secondary color, and 10% accent color. When generating random palettes, lock colors you like and regenerate the rest to iteratively refine your scheme. Remember that colors look different on different screens; test your palette on multiple devices. For brand identity, limit your palette to 3-5 core colors for consistency. Dark mode designs benefit from slightly desaturated colors compared to light mode. The hex format (#RRGGBB) is universal, but also consider using HSL or oklch() in modern CSS for easier adjustments.