Color Inspiration and Color Tools

A curated collection of the best color inspiration and tools for designers and creatives. Explore palettes, combinations, gradient inspiration, color pickers, and tools for managing color libraries and color systems for digital product design.

Inspiration & Combinations

Palette Generators

Color Libraries & Systems

Color Contrast & Accessibility

Books

Color Inspiration & Color Combinations

Discover trending palettes, combinations, color moods, and sources of color inspiration for web, product, brand, and graphic design projects.

Color Hunt

Free and open platform for color inspiration with thousands of trendy hand-picked color palettes.

Free

Picular

Works like google but the results are colors.

Free

Color Leap

Take a leap through time and see the colors of history.

Free

ColorDrop

Color palette inspiration for creatives.

Free

Hi Hues (Design Seeds)

For all who love colors.

Free

Tone

A source of inspiration for creating color palettes rooted in nature.

Free

SchemeColor

Discover thousands of beautiful color schemes made by professionals.

Free

Duo

Collection of color combinations to inspire your next design.

Free

Colorsinspo

All in one resource for finding everything about colors.

Free

Colors.lol

Overly descriptive color palettes.

Free

Color Controversy

Judge colors.

Free

Color Selector

A database of colors and images for trend forecaster and designers.

Free

Palitra

Just google your color palette.

Free

RandomA11y

Discover random, accessible color combinations on a real-time color playground.

Free

Color Palette Tools & Generators

Generate, customize, and experiment with color palettes using tools and generators suited for web, UI, product, branding, and graphic design workflows.

Partner*

Coolors

Create the perfect palette or get inspired by thousands of beautiful color schemes.

Free + Paid

Adobe Color

Create color themes, explore color inspiration and find color trends.

Free

Pantone Connect

Design with 15,000 Pantone® colors. Convert to Pantone codes. Create and save custom palettes.

Free Trial

Khroma

Discover, search, and save color combos and palettes powered by AI.

Free

Paletter

Your shortcut to consistently perfect colors.

Free + Paid

Colormind

AI powered color combinations based on your preferences.

Free

ColorSpace

Generate nice color palettes.

Free

Paletton

A color scheme designer.

Free

Subcolor

Subcolor is a tool to generate colors between two colors.

Free

Muzli Colors

Create beautiful color schemes that works.

Free

Palette App

Palette editing and remapping tool.

Free

ColorKit

Blends colors and generates a color's shades and tints.

Free

Spectrum

Generate color palettes and apply instantly to anything.

Paid

Poline

An enigmatic color palette generator, that harnesses the mystical witchcraft of polar coordinates.

Free

Palette Hunt

A quintessential ally for designers and color enthusiasts alike.

Free

Color Fuse AI

Let AI decide the right colors for your design projects.

Free + Paid

Color Libraries & Color System Tools

Manage and create accessible color libraries, schemes, swatches, and scalable color systems to keep palettes consistent across your digital products and design systems.

ColorBox

Open-source color tool to produce various color sets using algorithms.

Free

Material Design Color System

Create accessible, personal color schemes communicating your product's hierarchy, state, and brand.

Free

Harmonizer

Color palette generator for UI.

Free

Scale

A generative way to create color scales.

Free

Open Color

Open-source color scheme optimized for UI elements.

Free

Huey

Rapid color palettes across the rainbow.

Free

Goodpalette

Make beautiful color palettes for UI.

Free

Atmos

Create better UI color palettes with ease.

Free Trial

Supa Palette

The ultimate color palette generator for Figma.

Paid

Hue.tools

An open source toolbox for colors.

Free

InclusiveColors

Creates custom Tailwind-style color palettes with WCAG accessibility built-in.

Free

Leonardo

A one-of-a-kind tool for creating, managing, and sharing accessible color systems.

Free

Supa Colors

Professional color system builder with WCAG accessibility checks.

Freemium

Alphredo

Generate translucent (alpha) colors looking the same as their opaque counterparts.

Free

Colorca

Design an accessible color palette for digital products in HSLuv color space.

Free

Kolors

Color palette generator for design systems.

Free

Color Designer

A comprehensive color tools platform.

Free + Paid

Color Pal

A tool for selecting color palettes for design systems.

Free

Colorspace

A tool for generating consistent and predictable color swatches.

Free

Color Ramp

Create accessible color ramps in less than 5 seconds, no BS.

Free

Volume

A professional 3D OKLCH color picker and procedural palette generator

Free

Kigen Color Generator

Create shades for your next design system with style.

Free

Website Color Combinations & Real-World Examples

Discover effective website color combinations with curated palettes and real-world design examples from brand, web, graphic and digital product design.

Happy Hues

Curated colors in context.

Free

Realtime Colors

Visualize your color choices on a real website.

Free

UI Colors

Create and visualize Tailwind colors on all sorts of components, gradients, charts and logos.

Free + Paid

Huemint

Use machine learning to create unique color schemes for your brand, website or graphic.

Free

Palettemaker

Create and test drive color palettes on real design examples.

Free

Gradient Inspiration Resources

Browse gradient collections and curated examples for inspiration in UI, backgrounds, and visual design for your next design project.

Sponsor

Grabient

Beautiful gradient inspiration.

Free

Sponsor

CoolHue 2.0

Cool color gradients to copy and paste. Also available as a sketch plugin.

Free

Sponsor

Gradient Hunt

A free and open platform for color inspiration.

Free

Sponsor

Design Gradients

Free gradients curated by designers to use anywhere you want.

Free

Sponsor

WebGradients

A free collection of 180 linear gradients.

Free

Sponsor

CSS Gradient

Free css gradient generator tool, that lets you create colorful gradient backgrounds.

Free

Sponsor

Ingradients

Hand-picked mesh gradients for your next design project.

Free + Paid

Sponsor

Gradientos

Hand-picked CSS gradients on UI elements.

Free

Color Picker

Pick and sample colors between formats using color picker tools suited for design and development workflows on macOS or as web extensions.

System Color Picker

The familiar color picker supercharged.

Free

ColorSlurp

The ultimate color picker for Mac users.

Freemium

Sip

A professional color picker which allows you to collect, organize, edit and share colors on mac.

Free Trial

Roy

A tiny & delightful color picker for designers.

Paid

ColorZilla

A browser extension assisting web devs and graphic designers with color related tasks.

Free

Pika

An open-source colour picker app for macOS.

Free

Colorway

Seriously epic browser color tools.

Free

Color Pocket

An effortless color picker for Google Chrome.

Free

Litur

A color picker for the real world.

Free Trial

Just Color Picker

Free offline color picker and color editor for Windows.

Free

Explore color contrast checkers and accessibility tools to test readability and accessibility across different color combinations.

Color Converter

Pick, sample, and convert colors between formats using color pickers and converter tools designed for design and development workflows on macOS or as web extensions.

ColorHexa

A free color converter.

Free

OKLCH Color Picker

A new way of working with color.

Free

Colorizer

Color converter and generator with high precision and contrast test.

Free

rgb.to

Convert colors between HEX, RGB, CMYK, Pantone, RAL, HSL, HSB, and more.

Free

Color Contrast & Accessibility Tools

These color contrast tools help designers evaluate accessibility, validate WCAG ratios, and understand how color choices impact users with visual impairments or color blindness.

Who Can Use

Understand how color contrast can affect different people with visual impairments.

Free

Contrast

A Figma plugin and macOS app for quick access to WCAG color contrast ratios.

Free + Paid

Stark

Connects the tools you and your team already use in a streamlined end-to-end accessibility workflow.

Freemium

Accessible Brand Colors

A tool that shows you how ADA compliant your colors are in relation to each other.

Free

Button Buddy

Ensuring accessible contrast for buttons.

Free

Contrast Grid

Test many color combos for compliance with WCAG 2.0 minimum contrast.

Free

Colour Contrast Checker

Check the contrast between different colour combinations against WCAG standards.

Free

Color Review

A tool for exploring and finding accessible colors.

Free

Colour Contrast Analyser

Free color contrast checker tool to easily determine the contrast ratio of two colors.

Free

Sim Daltonism

Visualize colors as they are perceived with various types of color blindness.

Free

Accessible Color Matrix

A tool to help designers build color palettes with combinations that conform with accessibility standards.

Free

Contrast Plugin

Check the contrast ratios of colors as you work in Figma.

Free

Accented

A frontend library for continuous accessibility testing and issue highlighting.

Free

Polypane

A browser for developing responsive & accessible websites.

Paid

OddContrast

A color contrast checker with Oklch, Oklab, P3, and more.

Free

Learn more on how to design inclusive and usable interfaces across digital products and websites and explore our accessibility resources.

Books on Color Theory, Meaning & Practice

A hand-picked selection of books exploring color theory, meaning, and practical application across graphic, brand, and digital design.

Amazon*

The Complete Color Harmony, Pantone Edition: Expert Color Information for Professional Results

Leatrice Eiseman

Paid

Amazon*

Color and Meaning: Art, Science, and Symbolism

John Gage

Paid

Amazon*

Interaction of Color

Josef Albers

Paid

Amazon*

Palette Perfect for Graphic Designers and Illustrators: Colour Combinations, Meanings and Cultural References

Sara Caldas

Paid

Explore more books on design in the design books collection.

How These Color Tools Are Curated

These color tools and resources are curated through ongoing research. We highlight tools that are thoughtfully designed, widely adopted, and relevant for color inspiration, palette creation, color systems, and real-world design use. The list is updated regularly to reflect new tools and evolving approaches to working with color.

* Partner links are affiliate links, which help support this website at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate TOOOLS.design earns from qualifying purchases. Learn more