Build a five-color HSL palette and assign roles deliberately

Start with a base rather than a finished theme

The Color Palette Generator creates five proposed colors using HSL relationships. Choose Base color, select Palette relationship, and generate the result. The available relationships are Analogous, Complementary, Triadic, and Monochrome.

These labels describe the generation strategy, not a guarantee that every output will be suitable for every use. The implementation changes lightness as well as hue and applies a minimum saturation. Consequently, the selected base is not necessarily reproduced unchanged in every mode. Treat the output as a starting set to inspect.

Generate a predictable monochrome example

Set Base color to #FF0000 and choose Monochrome. The expected five HEX outputs are:

#660000
#B30000
#FF0000
#FF4D4D
#FF9999

This mode keeps the hue while setting successive HSL lightness values to 20%, 35%, 50%, 65%, and 80%. It makes the red example easy to verify. With a very low-saturation base, the generator’s minimum saturation means the palette may introduce more visible color than you expected from the original swatch.

Change the relationship and compare the new set. Complementary and Triadic modes use several offsets around their main hue relationships; they are not simply a two-color or three-color wheel diagram repeated to fill the row.

Assign a purpose to each candidate

Decide which swatches might be accents, backgrounds, borders, or illustrations before introducing text. A light accent and a dark accent can work well in a decorative chart while still being a poor foreground-background combination for a small label. Keep a written mapping from each chosen HEX value to its intended role.

The swatches display labels using a simple brightness-based choice of black or white. That label choice is not a contrast certification. WCAG’s contrast requirement evaluates actual foreground and background pairs; the generator does not compute the required ratio for your interface.

Test the palette in the real layout

Preview candidates in context, including disabled controls, focus indicators, charts, and dark backgrounds where relevant. Color should not be the only signal distinguishing an error from a success state. Keep text labels or other visible cues alongside color-dependent meaning.

Palette generation stays in your browser without an external color lookup. Use HEX to RGB to change notation for a selected swatch, or CSS Gradient Generator to explore two selected colors. Continue checking readability at the point where those colors meet actual content.