🎨 Color Picker
Pick a color and instantly get HEX, RGB, and HSL values.
What is this tool?
A color picker is a utility that lets you choose a color from a visual palette and instantly see its values in the three most common color formats used on the web: HEX, RGB, and HSL. Designers, developers, and artists constantly move between these representations because different tools and contexts expect different formats. CSS stylesheets often accept any of the three, but design software such as Figma or Photoshop may display HEX by default, while data-visualization libraries frequently ask for RGB or HSL tuples. This tool bridges those gaps by showing all three values side by side and keeping them in sync as you adjust the color, so you never have to reach for a separate converter. The built-in color input opens your operating system's native picker, which supports fine-grained selection across the entire spectrum, while the manual HEX field lets you paste an existing code to inspect or convert it. The large preview swatch shows the exact color at a generous size so you can judge it accurately, and one-click copy buttons send each value to your clipboard ready to paste into a stylesheet, a component library, or a design file. Because the conversions are performed with standard color-space math, the values are precise and consistent across browsers. Whether you are building a brand palette, picking an accent color for a button, or translating a designer's HEX code into the HSL your charting library needs, this tool gives you the right value in the right format without any friction.How it works
The tool maintains a single source of truth for the current color and converts it between formats whenever the source changes. When you use the visual color input, the browser returns a HEX string such as #3b82f6, which the tool reads and splits into its red, green, and blue components by parsing the hexadecimal pairs. Those three values, each ranging from zero to two hundred fifty-five, form the RGB tuple that gets displayed. To produce the HSL representation, the tool normalizes the RGB channels to a zero-to-one range and finds the maximum and minimum values to compute the lightness, then derives the saturation from the spread between them, and finally calculates the hue as an angle around the color wheel based on which channel is largest. When you type a HEX code manually, the tool validates the input, accepts codes with or without a leading hash, and pads three-digit shorthand, then runs the same conversion pipeline so the RGB and HSL outputs update instantly. The color preview swatch is updated by setting its background to the current HEX value, giving you an accurate, full-size rendering of the chosen color. Every conversion happens locally in JavaScript, so the tool is fast, private, and works offline, with no network calls required for any of the calculations.How to use
Picking and converting a color takes just a moment.
- Click the colored square to open your system's native color picker and choose any color visually. Alternatively, type a six-digit HEX code into the HEX input field, with or without the leading hash.
- As you change the color, the preview swatch updates instantly and the HEX, RGB, and HSL values recalculate in real time.
- Review the three values displayed below the preview. Each is shown in the exact format ready to paste into CSS or a design tool.
- Click the Copy button next to the format you need to send that value to your clipboard, then paste it into your stylesheet, component, or document. You can switch between colors as often as you like, and every value stays perfectly in sync.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between HEX, RGB, and HSL?
HEX expresses a color as a six-digit hexadecimal string such as #FF5733, where each pair of digits represents the red, green, and blue channels. RGB lists those same three channel values as decimal numbers from 0 to 255, for example rgb(255, 87, 51). HSL describes a color by hue, saturation, and lightness, which often feels more intuitive because you can darken or saturate a color by adjusting a single value.
Can I enter a HEX code manually?
Yes. Type any valid six-digit HEX code, with or without the leading hash, into the HEX field and the tool instantly updates the preview and shows the matching RGB and HSL values. Three-digit shorthand such as #3b5 is also accepted and expanded to its six-digit form.
Which format should I use in my CSS?
All three formats are valid in modern CSS, so the choice is mostly about convenience. HEX is compact and widely used in stylesheets. RGB is clear when you need to adjust opacity with the rgba() notation. HSL is especially helpful when you want to create tints and shades of the same hue, because you can change only the lightness while keeping the hue and saturation fixed.
Are the converted values precise?
Yes. The conversions use standard color-space mathematics, so the HEX, RGB, and HSL values are accurate and consistent across browsers. Because these formats all describe the same sRGB color space, converting between them never loses information.
Tips & Advice
When building a color palette, start from a single brand color and use the HSL readout to generate harmonious variants by adjusting lightness and saturation while keeping the hue constant, which produces tints and shades that feel like they belong together. For accessible interfaces, always check the contrast ratio between your chosen color and the text or background it sits on, because a color that looks striking can still fail readability standards. Remember that HSL lightness of fifty percent is not the same as perceptual brightness, so very bright yellows and very dark blues at the same HSL lightness can look quite different. If you are handing off colors to a developer, provide the HEX code as the canonical value and include the RGB and HSL equivalents as references. Finally, store your final palette in a shared token file so every team member references the same values, which prevents the subtle drift that happens when colors are copied by eye from one tool to another.