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ColorKit

Free online color picker

Color picker with every notation on screen

This color picker is free and needs no signup: drag the field, move the hue slider, or type a value, and the same color appears in HEX, RGB, HSL, HSV, CMYK and Lab side by side. Three of those six fields accept typed input, so a hex code from a brand guide goes straight in — including bare hex, the eight-digit alpha form and any of the 148 CSS color names. While you drag, the panel on the right scores the color against white and black to WCAG 2.1 and marks whether it clears 4.5:1 for body text, and Save swatch pins it to a strip of 24 that survives a reload.

  • 100% free
  • No signup
  • 6 notations at once
  • WCAG contrast live
  • 24 saved swatches

#2664eb

Closest CSS name: royalblue (ΔE 9.0)

Press Ctrl+V anywhere on the page to drop in a hex code, rgb() or hsl() value — no need to click the field first.

Every notation, all editable where the notation allows it

  • HEX
  • RGB
  • HSL
  • HSV
  • CMYK
  • Lab

Contrast against black and white

Sample text

On white: 5.13:1

Body text AA passLarge text AA passAAA fail

Sample text

On black: 4.10:1

Body text AA failLarge text AA passAAA fail

Ratios follow the WCAG 2.1 relative-luminance formula: 4.5:1 for body text, 3:1 for text at 24px or 18.66px bold, and 3:1 for icons and borders.

All 66 color tools

66 tools for the part of the job that happens after you have the color: conversions between every notation, palettes and harmony, contrast and color-blindness checks, gradient and CSS generators, type units, and the icons and images a page ships with.

Pick & convert

12 tools

Gradients & effects

13 tools

How to pick a color

Three steps, and the value is on your clipboard in a notation your stylesheet can read.

  1. Land on the color

    Drag inside the saturation field, or move the hue slider under it, and the swatch follows. Arrow keys nudge saturation and brightness one point at a time and Shift plus an arrow moves ten, which is how you land on a value a mouse keeps overshooting. On Chrome and Edge, “Pick from screen” hands you the EyeDropper API so you can lift a color from any window on the desktop, not just from this page.

  2. Type the exact value if you already have one

    The HEX, RGB and HSL fields accept input as well as showing it, so a code from a brand guide goes straight in. Bare hex without the # works, so do the three-digit and eight-digit forms, rgb(37 99 235 / 60%) in the modern slash syntax, and any of the 148 CSS keywords by name. The other three fields — HSV, CMYK and Lab — are read-outs, because a Lab value typed by hand is usually outside what a screen can show.

  3. Check it, then keep it

    The two panels on the right score the color against white and against black and mark whether it clears 4.5:1 for body text and 3:1 for large text. Press Save swatch to pin it to the strip under the picker; the strip holds 24 colors, persists across reloads and reloads any of them with one click.

Technical specifications

Accepted input#rgb, #rgba, #rrggbb, #rrggbbaa, the same four without the #, rgb() and rgba(), hsl() and hsla(), the CSS Color 4 slash-alpha syntax, all 148 named colors, and the keyword transparent
Notations shownSix at once — HEX, RGB, HSL, HSV, CMYK and Lab. HEX, RGB and HSL are editable; HSV, CMYK and Lab are read-outs
Precision8 bits per channel, 16,777,216 colors, plus a 0-100% alpha channel
Contrast engineWCAG 2.1 relative luminance, thresholds at 4.5:1 body text, 3:1 large text and 3:1 non-text
Closest-name matchRanked by CIE76 distance in CIE Lab against the 148 CSS keywords
Saved swatches24 maximum, held in browser local storage under colorkit:swatches, cleared by one button
Screen pickingEyeDropper API where the browser has it — Chrome 95+, Edge 95+, Opera 81+; the button is hidden in Firefox and Safari
PriceFree, no signup, no cap on how many colors you pick

Frequently asked questions

How do I find the hex code of a color on my screen?

Use “Pick from screen”, which opens the browser's EyeDropper and returns the hex of any pixel on your desktop, including pixels in other applications. It works in Chrome, Edge and Opera 95 and later; Firefox and Safari have not shipped the API, so the button is hidden there and the way in is a screenshot plus the image color picker instead.

Why does the hue slider not change anything when the swatch is white or black?

Because hue has no meaning at those points and the picker is remembering yours rather than resetting it. Pure white is saturation 0 and pure black is brightness 0, and every hue produces the same pixel in both cases, so hue is undefined there. Sliding hue at brightness 0 changes nothing visible until you raise brightness again — at which point the hue you chose is waiting.

What does the ΔE number next to the closest CSS name mean?

It is the perceptual distance between your color and that named color, measured in CIE Lab. Under about 2.3 the two are indistinguishable side by side, around 10 they read as related shades, and above 20 they are plainly different colors. The match is ranked in Lab rather than by RGB distance because equal steps in RGB are not equally visible — the eye resolves far more detail in green than in blue.

Can I type a color with transparency?

Yes, four ways: an eight-digit hex like #2563eb99, rgba(37, 99, 235, 0.6), the slash syntax rgb(37 99 235 / 60%), or the alpha slider. The swatch sits on a checkerboard so that 10% alpha and 0% alpha do not look identical against the page, and the HEX field switches to eight digits the moment alpha drops below 100%.

Are the saved swatches sent anywhere?

No — they are written to your browser's local storage under the key colorkit:swatches and never leave the machine. That is also their limit: they belong to this browser on this device, so they will not follow you to your phone, and Clear all removes them immediately.

Why do the CMYK numbers here differ from the ones in Illustrator?

Because Illustrator separates with an ICC profile behind it and this page has none. The values here come from the device-independent formula, which knows nothing about your press, your paper or your ink limit; a US Web Coated (SWOP) profile will disagree by several points on saturated colors and by more than that on anything outside the CMYK gamut. Treat the numbers as a starting point and see the RGB to CMYK page for what changes when a profile is involved.

What is the difference between HSL and HSV here?

They disagree about what the top of the scale means: at HSL lightness 100% you always get white, while at HSV brightness 100% you get the most vivid form of the hue. Design tools mostly expose HSV because a saturation-brightness square maps to it directly, and CSS speaks HSL, which is why both are on screen — the number you read off the square is not the number you paste into a stylesheet.

About picking a color precisely

A color picker is two tools wearing one coat. One of them is for exploring — a field you drag around until something looks right — and the other is for precision, where you already know the value and need it in a different notation before you can use it. Most pickers are built for the first job and treat the second as an afterthought, which is why so many of them show you a hex code and nothing else. The layout here gives both equal room: the field on the left for hunting, six simultaneous read-outs on the right for the moment the hunting is over.

The reason all six are visible at once is that the conversions are not interchangeable in practice. HSL is what CSS accepts, HSV is what the saturation-brightness square you just dragged actually represents, and the two disagree at the top of their scales: lightness 100% is white in HSL, while brightness 100% in HSV is the most saturated form of the hue. Lab is where the eye's own geometry lives, which is why the closest-name match is computed there rather than in RGB, and why the palette generator spaces its steps in Lab too. CMYK is the odd one out and is marked as a read-out deliberately: without an ICC profile it is arithmetic rather than an answer about ink, which the RGB to CMYK page explains in full.

The contrast read-out sits beside the picker rather than on a separate page because of what usually happens next. A color chosen purely on looks fails 4.5:1 against white more often than not — anything above roughly 60% lightness will — and finding that out three screens later means redoing the choice. Seeing the ratio move while you drag turns a compliance check into part of picking. When the pair you care about is not simply black or white on your color, the contrast checker takes both sides as input.

Where your colors are processed

Every number on this page is worked out by JavaScript running in the tab you are reading it in. Nothing you type, paste or open is uploaded, logged or kept, which is also why the tools carry on working after you disconnect from the network.

The one exception is the swatch strip. Saving a swatch writes the hex string to your browser's local storage under the key colorkit:swatches so it is still there next visit; it stays on the device, and Clear all deletes it on the spot.