📝 What Is Coolors?
Coolors is a web-based color palette generator that helps designers, developers, and brand specialists create visually harmonious color schemes in seconds. Instead of randomly guessing or manually mixing colors, Coolors uses intelligent algorithms to produce cohesive palettes from a single seed color or from an uploaded image. This tool matters because choosing the right colors can make or break a design — Coolors removes the guesswork, speeds up the creative process, and ensures professional-grade color combinations for branding, UI/UX design, illustrations, and more. With features like locking colors, adjusting harmony modes, and exporting in multiple formats, it's become an essential productivity tool in the design community.
🧮 Formula
Coolors applies color harmony rules based on HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness) mathematics. Starting from a user-selected or randomly generated base color, the algorithm rotates the hue by specific angles to create complementary (180°), split-complementary (150° & 210°), analogous (30°), triadic (120°), or tetradic (90°) colors. Saturation and lightness are then modulated using a weighted balancing function to ensure visual balance and contrast. The final palette is a set of 5 colors where each color's HSL values satisfy a harmony equation: H_n = (H_base + Δ_n) mod 360, with Δ_n depending on the chosen rule, and S_n, L_n adjusted by a perceptual contrast curve to avoid dull or overly bright extremes.
💡 Tips for Best Results
✨🎨 Use the 'Explore' tab to search thousands of premade palettes by mood, theme, or color — instantly save or remix favorites.
✨🔒 Lock key brand colors before generating new palettes to maintain consistency while exploring variations.
✨📸 Upload a reference image (logo, photo, artwork) using the 'Pick from image' tool to extract a ready-made palette in one click.
✨🌈 Switch between harmony modes (Complementary, Analogous, Triadic, etc.) to see how different color relationships affect your design's balance.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
Is Coolors free to use?
Yes, Coolors offers a generous free tier that includes the generator, explorer, and basic export options. Pro features (ad-free, unlimited palette storage, advanced export) are available via subscription.
Can I export palettes for use in Adobe software?
Absolutely — Coolors lets you export palettes as .ASE (Adobe Swatch Exchange) files, which can be imported into Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. You can also copy CSS variables directly.
How do I create a palette from a photo or logo?
Click on the camera icon in the generator, upload your image, and the tool will automatically extract 5 dominant colors. You can then lock and adjust them as needed for your project.