A color palette is the short list of colors a design promises to stick to. Choose a handful once, and every button, background and headline pulls from the same pot.
That's why a brand feels like one thing instead of a pile of things. Most good palettes follow a loose 60-30-10 split: lots of quiet, a decent helping of character, and one small spark.
Think of it as a sketching partner that never gets tired. Press the space bar and it deals out colors that actually get along, matched by hue, tone and mood.
Right now you're on auto: a surprise harmony every roll. The closer the dots sit on the wheel, the calmer the mood; the further apart, the louder.
Play with the color wheelA palette works when its colors are related, readable against each other, and not all competing for the same job. Here's how the one on screen holds up, and where one small tweak would help.
A healthy spread from light to dark gives you room for backgrounds, text and accents.
Every color earns its place. No near-duplicates.
Saturation is consistent, so nothing shouts or fades out of the family.
A few hues drift away from any clean pattern. Pick a specific harmony in the generator to pull them back in line.
The strongest pairing is only 3.7:1. Add one much darker or lighter color so text has somewhere to sit.
Trends in color are less about new colors and more about new company. The same greens and clays keep coming back, just paired differently. These are moods designers keep reaching for. Tap one to bend it your way.
A palette is a box of crayons. A theme is the rule about which crayon colors the sky.
Same five colors, but a theme decides the lightest is the background, the darkest is the text and the boldest is the button. It also covers the dark-mode version.
Great combinations tend to share one trick: a couple of quiet colors and one that sings. Here are ten that pull it off. Open any of them and keep tweaking.