Methodology
How a palette enters the library.
ColorPaletteHub is opinionated by design. This page documents the method behind that opinion — what we measure, how we research, and where we draw the line between “include” and “not yet”.
Four principles.
What we measure each entry against before it goes live.
01
Five-tone systems, not single colours
A palette is a budget. Below five tones it's a colour pair; above five it stops behaving like a system. Every editorial palette on the site enters at five anchors — sometimes with an extended family of 10–14 derived tones, never as a long list of options.
02
Material reference, not colour-wheel logic
We name colours after substances — bone, terracotta, sage, moss — because that's how the eye reads them in the wild. Generic names (brown, tan, green) are placeholders, not entries.
03
Coherence across three axes
Every palette has to hold up across hue family, value ladder, and saturation range. The minute one axis drifts — a stray cool note inside a warm system, or a saturated tone in a muted set — the palette goes back for revision.
04
Use cases that can be named
If we can't describe three concrete contexts where a palette earns its place, the palette isn't ready. “Looks nice” isn't a use case.
How a palette is profiled.
Seven steps from reference to publication. Each step has a written output; nothing happens in someone's head.
Step 01
Reference gathering
An editor proposes a palette anchored by 3–5 real-world references — a magazine spread, an interior, a packaging system, a piece of identity work.
Step 02
Anchor specification
We extract five hex codes per reference set, sampling from the load-bearing surfaces — not the imagery on top. Each anchor gets a role (60% surface, 30% structure, 10% accent).
Step 03
Coherence check
Hue, value, saturation analyzed across all five anchors. Each axis has to read as one decision. Outliers go back to step 02 or out of the candidate set entirely.
Step 04
Family extension
Anchors are extended into a family of 10–14 derived tones for illustration, packaging, and wardrobe use. Family tones are interpolated by hand, not by algorithm.
Step 05
Accessibility verification
WCAG contrast computed for the load-bearing pairs (body type on surface, type on accent). Body-text pairs must clear AA at minimum; we note where they clear AAA.
Step 06
Pairing & avoid lists
Editor writes the five colours that extend the palette cleanly and the five that break it. Avoid lists exist to be argued with — they document the contract, not the taboo.
Step 07
Editorial review
Two editors sign off before publication. Disagreement is noted in the entry rather than smoothed over.
How a named colour is researched.
A colour name has a history. We document it.
A
Etymology & origin
Where does the colour name come from? Latin caeruleus for cerulean. Italian terra cotta for terracotta. We cite the earliest documented English-language use we can verify.
B
Pigment & physical reference
What material does the colour name? Cobalt stannate, sage leaf, clay tile, ground lapis. If the colour predates its hex code by centuries, we note that gap.
C
Cultural register
Which categories has the colour belonged to historically — civic, religious, fashion, hospitality? We note where the colour has moved between registers.
D
Use cases & avoid cases
The three categories where the colour earns its place today, and the three where it reads as foreign. We argue these explicitly.
When an entry changes.
Entries get edited. We don't maintain a public changelog yet, but we apply two rules: a hex code never changes silently, and a judgement (a pair-with or an avoid) never gets removed without a sentence about why. The site is allowed to change its mind. It isn't allowed to pretend it never had one.
If you spot an error — a wrong hex, a broken citation, a use case we've described badly — write to us. Corrections are welcome at any time.
Disclosure.
ColorPaletteHub is an independent editorial project. We do not accept payment for inclusion in the library, the trending list, or any curated collection. If a partnership ever changes that, this page will say so explicitly and the relevant entries will carry a disclosure notice in the byline.
All hex codes published here are open data — copy them, use them, recombine them. The editorial copy is licensed for non-commercial re-use with attribution.
Start with a palette.
Or, if you spotted something missing — tell us.