Free Colour Palette Generator

Most brand palettes have between three and five colours: a primary, one or two secondaries, and a couple of neutrals. Going beyond five tends to dilute recognition. If every piece of marketing uses a different colour, none of them become “your” colour. If you need more variety for things like data visualisation or illustration, consider building a secondary palette that extends the main one, rather than expanding the core palette itself.

They’re three ways of describing the same colour. Hex codes (like #08CF65) are the most common online. You’ll see them in CSS, design tools, and brand guidelines. RGB describes a colour in terms of red, green, and blue light values, which is how screens actually produce colours. HSL (hue, saturation, lightness) is more intuitive when you’re trying to make adjustments, like making a colour darker or more muted. The generator outputs hex codes because they’re the format you’ll need most often.

The generator deliberately desaturates very light and very dark colours, because pure hues at extreme lightness values rarely look professional. A near-white at full saturation reads as a pastel sweet wrapper. A near-black at full saturation reads as muddy. Real brand palettes (the ones that look refined) almost always use desaturated tints for their off-whites and off-blacks. The tool builds these in by default.

Yes. Colours themselves can’t be copyrighted, with very rare exceptions for highly specific shades registered as trademarks (Cadbury’s purple is one famous case). Any palette you generate here is yours to use however you like, including for client work and commercial branding.

Analogous palettes use colours that sit next to each other on the colour wheel. Think blue, blue-green, and green. They feel harmonious and calm, but can lack contrast. Complementary palettes use colours from opposite sides of the wheel (like blue and orange), which creates strong contrast and visual energy. Triadic palettes use three colours evenly spaced around the wheel, which gives you more variety while still feeling balanced. The generator cycles through all of these, so you’ll see different moods each time you press space.

The key thing to check is the contrast between any text colour and the background it sits on. WCAG accessibility guidelines recommend a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal body text, and 3:1 for large text. Tools like WebAIM’s Contrast Checker will give you a precise reading once you have your hex codes. As a rule of thumb, if you’re struggling to read text on a coloured background, your users will struggle too.

Differentiate. If every law firm in your area uses navy and gold, picking navy and gold makes you forgettable. The whole point of a brand palette is to be recognisable as you, not as “another business in this category.” Look at what competitors are doing, then pick something that stands out while still fitting your industry’s tone. You don’t need neon pink to be different from navy.