Color Palette Generator
Generate color palettes from a base color
How to Use Color Palette Generator
- Pick a base colour.
- Complementary, analogous, triadic and split-complementary palettes are generated from it.
- Click any swatch to copy its value.
About Color Palette Generator
What this page solves
Color Palette Generator solves the privacy and friction problem of typical online tools — it never uploads, never asks for a signup, and runs in your browser.
Color Palette Generator is a free design utility that helps you generate color palettes from a base color with a live preview and copyable code output. It is built for designers, frontend developers, and product builders who want to iterate visually without firing up a full design tool. Adjust the controls, see the change instantly, and copy production-ready CSS to paste into your stylesheet, design system, or component library. Pair Color Palette Generator with your component library: prototype the value here, then fold it into a token or variant once it's stable. For design handoff, Color Palette Generator produces a copyable spec the developer can use directly — eliminating the "interpretation" round-trip that pixel-perfect work needs. Nothing you load into Color Palette Generator is uploaded: the file or text is read with the browser's own FileReader and processed in page memory, so the work finishes even if your connection drops mid-task. Color Palette Generator is part of our Design Tools toolkit, which covers colors, gradients, shadows, typography, and reusable visual primitives. If you also need a complementary utility, try our Gradient Generator. It is free, runs entirely in your browser, and pairs well with any design system or framework.
Common Use Cases
- Prototype a visual style before adding it to a design system
- Generate copy-paste CSS for a quick component tweak
- Explore variations on colors, gradients, or shadows
- Hand off a precise visual spec to a developer
- Build a personal library of reusable design tokens
- Adapting an existing design pattern to a new brand's color palette
- Iterating on a visual token (color, shadow, radius) before pasting it into a design system
- Handling a one-off task on a borrowed or public machine where installing software is not an option
Related tools in Design Tools
- Gradient GeneratorCreate CSS gradients with multiple color stops
- CSS Box Shadow GeneratorGenerate CSS box-shadow with live preview
- Color MixerMix two colors together to find the result
- Shades & Tints GeneratorGenerate shades and tints of any color
See all Design Tools.
Frequently asked questions
Which scheme should I use?
Complementary for high contrast where you want something to stand out. Analogous — neighbouring hues — for a harmonious, low-tension feel. Triadic for vibrant, balanced schemes. Split-complementary gives you contrast with less tension than a straight complement.
Are these palettes accessible?
Not automatically. Colour harmony and contrast accessibility are different problems, and a beautiful palette can easily fail WCAG. Check any text and background pairing against a contrast checker — you need 4.5:1 for body text.
How many colours should a palette have?
Three to five for most interfaces: a dominant, a secondary, an accent, plus neutrals for text and backgrounds. More than that becomes hard to apply consistently.
What is the 60-30-10 rule?
An interior design convention that transfers well to interfaces. Sixty percent of the visible area in your dominant colour, thirty in the secondary, ten in the accent. It stops palettes feeling either monotonous or chaotic.
How to use Color Palette Generator?
1) Open the tool. 2) Enter or upload your input. 3) Get your result instantly. Everything happens locally — nothing is uploaded.
When should I use Color Palette Generator?
Use Color Palette Generator whenever you need a fast, private, browser-based way to generate color palettes from a base color.
Is Color Palette Generator safe?
Yes. Color Palette Generator runs 100% in your browser. Inputs are never uploaded, stored, or logged — safe for confidential content.
Will quality be affected by Color Palette Generator?
Color Palette Generator performs lossless operations — your content is not re-encoded or downgraded.
What formats does Color Palette Generator support?
Color Palette Generator supports all common formats — paste, type, or load from a file.
Is Color Palette Generator free?
Yes — Color Palette Generator is completely free, with no registration, no watermarks, and no usage limits.
Will the generated CSS work in all browsers?
Color Palette Generator produces standards-compliant CSS that works in all modern browsers. We avoid experimental properties unless they are clearly labeled.
Can I save my designs?
Color Palette Generator lets you copy the resulting code immediately. For longer sessions, paste the output into your project or a snippet manager.
Does Color Palette Generator work with my design system?
Yes. The output is plain CSS, so it integrates with Tailwind, CSS-in-JS, vanilla CSS, and any modern framework.
Does Color Palette Generator work offline?
Once the page has loaded, yes. All processing runs in your browser, so the tool keeps working if your connection drops. You only need the network for the initial page load.