About This Tool
Choosing the right colors is more than just aesthetics; it is about accessibility, brand consistency, and user experience. Every color decision impacts how users perceive your brand and interact with your interface, from the trust conveyed by a corporate blue to the urgency suggested by a call-to-action red. This color picker and converter is built for developers and designers who need precision in their daily workflow. Convert between HEX, RGB, and HSL formats instantly, generate harmonious color palettes including complementary, triadic, and analogous schemes, and verify your color choices against WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards to ensure your content is readable for everyone. The built-in contrast checker shows real-time pass or fail status for AA and AAA compliance, so you can catch accessibility issues before they reach production. Color history tracking keeps your recent selections available for quick reference, eliminating the need to write down hex codes on sticky notes. Professional designers use tools like this to maintain consistent brand palettes across projects, and front-end developers rely on accurate format conversions to translate design mockups into CSS without rounding errors or color drift.
Understanding Color Spaces
Web developers primarily deal with three color models, each with distinct advantages:
- HEX (Hexadecimal): A 6-digit code (e.g., #3B82F6) widely used in CSS. It combines Red, Green, and Blue values in base-16 format. HEX codes are compact and easy to copy between design tools and code editors.
- RGB (Red, Green, Blue): Defines colors by the intensity of these three primary lights (0-255). This format is best for understanding how screens display color and is commonly used in JavaScript for dynamic color manipulation.
- HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness): Often more intuitive for humans. "Hue" is the color itself (0-360°), "Saturation" is the intensity or vibrancy, and "Lightness" controls how bright or dark the color appears. HSL makes it easy to create consistent color variations.
Modern CSS also supports newer color spaces like LCH and OKLCH, which provide more perceptually uniform color gradients.
Why WCAG Contrast Matters
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) ensure that text is readable for users with visual impairments, including color blindness and low vision. Failing to meet these standards can exclude millions of users from accessing your content.
- AA Level (Minimum): Requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. This is the baseline for most websites and applications.
- AAA Level (Enhanced): Requires a contrast ratio of 7:1 for normal text and 4.5:1 for large text. This level is recommended for body text on content-heavy sites.
Use our built-in Contrast Checker to test your foreground text against your background color instantly. The tool shows real-time pass/fail status for both AA and AAA compliance levels.
Color Palette Generation
Creating a cohesive color palette is essential for professional design. Our tool generates three types of harmonious palettes:
- Complementary: Colors opposite each other on the color wheel. These create maximum contrast and visual tension, perfect for call-to-action buttons or highlighting important elements.
- Triadic: Three colors evenly spaced around the color wheel. This scheme offers strong visual contrast while maintaining color harmony and balance.
- Analogous: Colors adjacent to each other on the color wheel. These create serene, comfortable designs often found in nature, ideal for backgrounds and subtle UI elements.
Click on any color in the generated palettes to copy its HEX value to your clipboard instantly.
Common Color Selection Mistakes
Even experienced designers make color mistakes that hurt readability and brand perception. Here are the most common pitfalls and how to avoid them:
- Ignoring contrast ratios: A color that looks great on your high-end monitor may be unreadable on a budget laptop screen. Always test contrast ratios against WCAG standards, not just your own eyesight. The minimum 4.5:1 ratio for normal text exists because roughly 8% of men and 0.5% of women have some form of color vision deficiency.
- Using pure black on pure white: A contrast ratio of 21:1 is technically perfect, but pure black (#000000) on pure white (#FFFFFF) creates visual vibration that causes eye fatigue during extended reading. Use off-black (#1A1A1A or #333333) on off-white (#F5F5F5) for comfortable reading on content-heavy pages.
- Relying on color alone to convey meaning: Red for errors and green for success works for most users, but not for those with red-green color blindness. Always pair color with icons, text labels, or patterns so the meaning is clear regardless of color perception.
- Too many brand colors: Limit your primary palette to 2-3 colors plus neutrals. More than that creates visual chaos and weakens brand recognition. Use tints and shades of your primary colors for variety instead of adding entirely new hues.
Testing your color choices with this tool before committing to a design system saves hours of rework when accessibility audits reveal compliance failures later in the development cycle.
Using Color in CSS and Design Systems
Modern CSS provides multiple ways to define colors, each with different strengths for design system implementation:
- CSS Custom Properties (Variables): Define colors once using --brand-primary: #3B82F6 and reference them throughout your stylesheet. This approach makes theme switching and dark mode implementation simple because you change one variable instead of hundreds of color values.
- HSL for programmatic variation: Define a base hue (such as 217 for blue) and generate hover states, disabled states, and backgrounds by adjusting saturation and lightness. For example, hsl(217, 91%, 60%) for primary, hsl(217, 91%, 50%) for hover, and hsl(217, 91%, 95%) for a light background all share the same hue and feel cohesive.
- Opacity with RGBA: Use rgba(59, 130, 246, 0.1) for subtle background tints that automatically adapt to any underlying color. This technique is especially useful for hover states on cards and list items where the background color may vary.
- Color-mix() function: The newer CSS color-mix() function lets you blend two colors directly in CSS without preprocessors. For example, color-mix(in srgb, #3B82F6 70%, white) creates a 70/30 blend that is useful for generating tint scales dynamically.
When building a design system, export your color palette in multiple formats (HEX for Figma, HSL for CSS variables, RGB for JavaScript animations) to ensure consistency across all platforms and tools your team uses.