css named colour explorer

Why 139 cards?

There are 148 CSS named colours, but some names point to exactly the same colour value. We de-duplicate those matches, so you see 139 unique colour cards instead of repeated duplicates, such as "cyan" and "aqua", or "grey" and "gray".

Contrast and ratings

Each contrast check is calculated against plain black and plain white text. The 'AA' and 'AAA' ratings come from WCAG contrast thresholds, and you can click each pill to toggle between the rating view and the exact calculated ratio.

How palettes are built

The algorithmic palette uses computed colour relationships based on standard perceptual colour theory. The natural palette derives colours from analysis of hundreds of natural-world images - landscapes, animals, flowers, and people - that feature the colour. The artistic palette was derived by extracting colour pairings from hundreds of images of professional and historic artistic illustrations and paintings in which the target colour is dominant. In the final step, all calculated and derived colours are converted to their closest CSS named colours.