Generate harmonious color palettes from any base color. Get complementary, analogous, and triadic color schemes with HEX, RGB, and HSL values — free tool.
Pick a Color
Or enter HEX below
Color Palette Generator is a free online tool that creates a set of five harmonious colors from any base HEX color you provide. Using established color theory principles, it generates a complementary color, two analogous colors, and a triadic variant alongside your original base color. Each color is displayed as a visual swatch with its HEX, RGB, and HSL values, making it easy to copy exact values into your CSS, design tool, or style guide. All processing happens entirely in your browser with no server requests.
Use the Color Palette Generator when you have a primary brand color and need to build a cohesive color scheme around it. It saves time compared to manually rotating hue values on a color wheel. It is especially useful during the early stages of UI design when you need accent, secondary, and contrast colors that naturally complement your chosen base, or when refreshing an existing brand palette.
Designers and developers commonly use Color Palette Generator to build design token color scales from a single brand color, create accessible color combinations for buttons and text against various backgrounds, generate complementary accent colors for charts and data visualizations, explore triadic and analogous palettes for creative projects and illustrations, and quickly export color values in multiple formats for use in CSS variables, Sass maps, or Tailwind configuration files.
Essential terms and definitions related to Color Palette Generator.
A set of principles for combining colors that produce aesthetically pleasing and balanced results. Based on the color wheel, harmony types include complementary (opposite colors), analogous (adjacent colors), triadic (three evenly spaced), split-complementary, and tetradic (four colors). Each scheme evokes different visual moods and contrast levels.
Two colors that sit directly opposite each other on the color wheel (e.g., blue and orange, red and green). Complementary pairs create maximum contrast and visual vibrance when placed side by side. They are effective for call-to-action elements but can be harsh for large text areas.
A circular diagram organizing colors by their chromatic relationship based on hue. The wheel arranges primary (red, yellow, blue), secondary (orange, green, violet), and tertiary colors in a continuous spectrum. It is the fundamental tool for understanding color relationships and building harmonious palettes.
The tool generates complementary (opposite on color wheel), analogous (adjacent colors), triadic (three evenly spaced), and other harmony types. Each scheme produces a balanced palette suitable for web design, branding, and UI work.
Yes. Each color in the generated palette is displayed in HEX, RGB, and HSL formats. You can copy any format directly for use in CSS, design tools, or other applications.
Start with a brand color or the primary color of your design. The tool will generate harmonious companion colors automatically. Saturated colors produce more vibrant palettes, while desaturated colors create more subtle, professional schemes.
Common errors developers encounter and how to resolve them.
Palette colors look different on screen vs print: sRGB vs CMYK color space difference The sRGB color space used in web design and the CMYK color space used in print have different gamuts (color ranges). Neon and fluorescent colors that look vibrant on screen may appear dull in CMYK because those tones fall outside the CMYK gamut. Solution: when creating palettes for print, avoid high saturation values (keep S < 85% in HSL). Use this tool to examine the HSL values of the generated palette to evaluate print compatibility.
Complementary color combination fails accessibility testing Complementary (opposite) colors on the color wheel are visually striking, but they can have similar luminance (brightness) values and may not meet WCAG contrast criteria when used as text/background. For example, pure red (#FF0000) and pure green (#00FF00) are complementary colors but have a contrast ratio of only ~1.4:1 (minimum 4.5:1 required). Solution: differentiate the lightness values of palette colors — keep one color light and the other dark to ensure sufficient contrast. Use our Color Converter tool to obtain RGB values for luminance calculation.
Analogous palette shows all colors as the same: Hue angle too narrow Analogous (neighboring) color palettes consist of Hue values close together on the color wheel. When the default angle range is too narrow (10-15°), the generated colors become indistinguishable. The ideal Hue difference for an analogous palette is around 30°. You can also increase visual differentiation by varying Saturation and Lightness values (light-dark contrast). Use this tool to try different base colors to find the most distinguishable palette.