Color Picker for Brand Design — Maintain Consistent Colors Across Platforms

Brand colors are more than aesthetic choices. They're consistency tools. When your website hero uses #1A73E8 and your email template uses #1B74E9 and your business cards were printed with "royal blue," your brand looks subtly different in every context. Over time, that inconsistency erodes the visual identity you're trying to build.

Primary, secondary, and accent colors

Most brand palettes have three tiers. The primary color is the dominant one, used for key UI elements like buttons, links, and headers. Secondary colors support the primary and appear on backgrounds, cards, and secondary buttons. Accent colors are used sparingly for highlights, badges, and call-outs.

A common mistake is choosing too many primary colors. One or two brand colors that appear consistently across every touchpoint are more recognizable than five colors that rotate unpredictably.

Document every color in every format

Once you've chosen your palette, record each color in all the formats your team uses. Developers need the hex code and RGB values. Print designers need the Pantone (PMS) number and CMYK values. Keeping these in one place prevents the drift that happens when each tool or person generates their own version.

Brand Blue:
  HEX:     #1A73E8
  RGB:     rgb(26, 115, 232)
  HSL:     hsl(217, 80%, 51%)
  CMYK:    C=89 M=50 Y=0 K=9
  Pantone: PMS 2728 C

Checking contrast for accessibility

Your brand colors need to pass WCAG contrast ratio requirements. Text on a background needs at least 4.5:1 contrast (AA standard) or 7:1 (AAA). A vivid brand blue on a white background might be fine, but the same blue with white text on top might fail. Test every color combination, not just the ones you think might be problematic.

Building tonal scales

Modern design systems use tonal scales rather than a single shade per color. Your brand blue might have ten shades from very light (blue-50 for backgrounds) to very dark (blue-950 for text). These are easier to generate in HSL format by adjusting the lightness value, then converting to hex for implementation.

Use the Color Converter to quickly convert between formats when building out your palette and documenting values for your design system.