Tool
What the Monochromatic Palette Generator does
Monochromatic Palette Generator: generates Palette from Base colour.
Give the Monochromatic Palette Generator your Base colour and it works out Palette. Adjust anything and the figures re-derive on the spot.
Most people who open the Monochromatic Palette Generator are people building out a palette. Picking colours that work together is easier with the maths already done.
The page holds your values in memory and forgets them the moment you close it.
The field table, the method and a worked example are documented after the tool for anyone who wants to check the working.
What do the Monochromatic Palette Generator fields mean?
The Monochromatic Palette Generator uses 1 input. A filled form means you can test one idea immediately instead of sourcing every input first.
| Field | What to enter | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Base colour | optional | #2563eb |
How does the Monochromatic Palette Generator work?
Each output is derived from the inputs above in a single pass; there is no hidden state carried between runs, so the same inputs always give the same generated output.
Bad input produces a message, not a silently incorrect figure.
What a typical run looks like
You provide: Base colour
What happens: the file is read into memory by your browser, processed locally, and offered back as a download. It is never uploaded.
You get back: a new file plus a brief account of what happened to it, shown in the panel.
How long this takes is a property of your computer, not of our infrastructure, and file size is bounded by browser memory.
Monochromatic palettes
A monochromatic palette uses one hue and varies only lightness and saturation. It is the hardest scheme to get wrong and the easiest to make boring.
| Rule | one hue, vary L and S | no hue rotation at all |
|---|---|---|
| Contrast | from lightness only | no hue contrast available |
| Typical use | minimal interfaces, data visualisation | sequential scales |
| Risk | flatness | needs wide lightness spread |
Worth knowing
- Spread lightness widely, at least 60 points between your lightest and darkest step, or everything blends together.
- Because there is no hue contrast, this scheme is inherently safe for colour vision deficiency.
- Sequential data scales are monochromatic for exactly that reason: quantity maps naturally onto lightness.
- One contrasting accent colour rescues a monochromatic interface without breaking its character.
Read next: Colour Contrast and WCAG: The Ratio, the Thresholds, What They Miss
How to use it
- Set Base colour.
- Because there is no round trip to a server, updating on every keystroke costs nothing.
- Check Palette on the right.
- Copy Link when you want to return to this exact configuration; Print when someone needs it on paper.
What this tool does not do
- Colours render differently across displays; the values are exact but the appearance is not guaranteed.
- Conversions between colour spaces with different gamuts are approximate at the edges.
- Where a standard has revisions, the version used is the one named in the method section.
Frequently asked questions
The form asks for Base colour. Every box already holds a working value, so the form is usable immediately, without filling anything in first.
Nothing leaves your machine. The only network traffic is loading the page itself.
No charge. Everything on the page is available without signing in.
As accurate as the inputs allow. The arithmetic itself introduces no error beyond display rounding.