How the matching works
Most palette sites let you browse. This one starts from a constraint you already have — a brand colour, a sofa you are not replacing, a logo you cannot change — and finds what works around it.
Every colour in the library is stored in CIE Lab rather than RGB. That matters because RGB distance does not correspond to perceived difference: our eyes are far more sensitive to variation in greens than in blues, so two colours the same numeric distance apart can look identical in one part of the spectrum and obviously different in another. Lab was constructed specifically so that equal distances look equally different. Ranking by Lab distance produces an order that matches what you see; ranking by hex distance does not.
When you supply two colours, the score uses the worse of the two distances. A palette that matches your primary perfectly but contains nothing near your secondary would score well on an average and be useless in practice. Requiring both to be close is what makes the results actionable.
Where the library comes from
The base is 52 palettes that already exist in the world rather than colours generated at random: published design systems including Material Design, Tailwind and IBM Carbon; interior schemes of the kind paint manufacturers print in their catalogues; brand palettes from recognisable categories such as fintech, health and food; recurring photographic combinations like golden hour and alpine water; and historical sets from mid-century, art deco and eighties graphics.
Each seed is then expanded by rotating every colour in it by the same hue angle, and by two saturation variants. Rotating the whole set together is the important detail: the relationships between the colours — the lightness steps, the hue gaps — are what made the original work, and a uniform rotation preserves all of them while landing in a different part of the spectrum. Near-neutral seeds are excluded from rotation, since spinning a palette of greys just produces more greys.
Reading the results
- Order matters. Every palette runs light to dark. The first colour is your background, the last is your text, and the middle is where accents live.
- Do not use all five equally. The usual proportion is 60% of the lightest, 30% of a mid-tone, 10% of the accent. A palette used in equal parts reads as noise regardless of how good the colours are.
- Check contrast before shipping. A palette can be beautiful and still fail accessibility. Take the two colours you plan to use for text and background into our colour wheel, which shows the WCAG ratio.
Using it for interiors
The interior category holds schemes structured the way a room actually works: a dominant wall colour, a lighter trim, a mid-tone for large furniture, and one or two darker accents. Enter the colour of something you are keeping — flooring, a sofa, cabinetry — and the matches show what genuinely sits alongside it.
One caveat that applies to every online palette tool: screen colour is emissive and paint is reflective, and a colour that looks right on a monitor can look muddy or cold on a wall under your lighting. Treat the result as a shortlist, then test physical samples on the actual wall in daylight and at night.
Privacy
The library is a static file your browser downloads once. All matching happens locally — the colours you enter are never sent anywhere.
Frequently asked questions
Where do the palettes come from?
The library is built from 52 real seed palettes — published design systems (Material, Tailwind, IBM Carbon), paint-catalogue interior schemes, known brand palettes, and recurring photographic combinations — expanded by rotating each seed's hue and adjusting saturation. Rotating the whole set by the same angle preserves the internal relationships that made the original work, which is why the variations still hold together.
Why does it match on Lab instead of hex distance?
Because RGB distance does not match human perception. Two greens 30 units apart in RGB look nearly identical, while two blues the same distance apart look obviously different. CIE Lab is designed so that equal numeric distances correspond to roughly equal perceived differences, so the ranking reflects what your eye actually sees.
What does the match percentage mean?
It is derived from the perceptual distance between your colour and the closest colour in that palette. Above roughly 90% the palette contains an almost identical shade; between 70 and 90% it contains a clear relative; below that it is in the same family but visibly different.
How does matching two colours work?
It uses the worse of the two distances rather than the average. A palette that nails your primary but has nothing near your secondary would win on an average and be useless in practice, so requiring both to be close is the only ranking that produces usable results.