Color Palette Generator with Contrast Checker
Generate beautiful, harmonious color palettes for your website or app with this free online palette generator. Explore trending combinations, build schemes around your brand color, verify text readability with the built-in WCAG contrast checker, and copy every shade as CSS variables or Tailwind-ready values.
Great palettes are systematic, not lucky: they balance hue harmony, tonal range, and accessibility. This tool handles all three — generating cohesive schemes while showing you contrast ratios, so the palette that looks good in the preview also passes accessibility audits in production.
How to Generate a Color Palette
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Start from a seed color or shuffle
Lock in your brand color and build around it, or shuffle for fresh inspiration.
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Refine the scheme
Adjust individual swatches until the palette balances — hue, saturation, and lightness are all editable.
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Check contrast
Verify foreground/background pairs meet WCAG AA or AAA contrast ratios before you commit.
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Copy the code
Export the palette as HEX values, CSS custom properties, or Tailwind-compatible tokens.
Why Use This Palette Generator?
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Harmony-based generation
Palettes follow color theory — complementary, analogous, and triadic relationships — instead of random picks.
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WCAG contrast checking
See contrast ratios for text/background pairs and catch accessibility failures before launch.
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CSS and Tailwind output
Copy swatches as HEX, CSS variables, or Tailwind config values in one click.
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Lock and iterate
Keep the colors you love and regenerate the rest until the full scheme clicks.
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Free and unlimited
Generate as many palettes as you want — no account, no limits.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many colors should a website palette have?
A practical system: one primary brand color, one or two accents, a semantic set (success, warning, error), and a neutral gray ramp for text, borders, and surfaces. That is usually 5–8 core hues expanded into tints and shades.
What contrast ratio does WCAG require?
WCAG AA requires at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text (18pt+ or 14pt bold). AAA raises those to 7:1 and 4.5:1. The built-in checker reports the exact ratio for any pair.
How do I build a palette around my existing brand color?
Enter your brand color as the seed and the generator derives harmonious companions — accents from color-wheel relationships and neutrals tinted toward your hue for a cohesive feel.
Can I copy the palette for Tailwind CSS?
Yes — export swatches in a Tailwind-friendly format and drop them into your theme configuration or CSS variables.