About The Color Sheet | Free Color Palettes and OKLCH Guide

01 / Start here

A palette shouldn’t be a whole ordeal.

I like finding colors. I really dislike having to create an account before I can even try a free tool. Sometimes I just want to copy a color code and get on with my day. Apparently, that’s a lot to ask.

So I built The Color Sheet. Browse free color palettes, see one in a sample layout, and copy what you need. There’s a palette maker, a gradient maker, and a photo color picker, too. No account needed.

The idea is to make picking colors a little easier. One useful bit of that is the color math.

02 / Color & perception

What is OKLCH, and how is it different from RGB?

RGB describes a screen color as amounts of red, green, and blue light. That works well for screens, but the numbers don’t match what your eyes notice. The same change in two RGB colors can look like a tiny tweak in one and a big jump in another.

OKLCH uses three controls that make more sense when you’re picking colors: lightness (L), chroma (C, how vivid or muted it looks), and hue (h, its place on the color wheel). Raising L makes a color lighter. Lowering C makes it less vivid. For once, the controls do roughly what you’d expect.

coral Xoklch(62% 0.14 30)

violet Ooklch(62% 0.14 280)

These two samples keep lightness and chroma the same; only the hue changes. That makes OKLCH handy for building a palette with colors that feel related. It’s a useful guide, not a perfect prediction: screens and eyes vary.

The calculation, in short: Convert the RGB numbers to linear light. Matrix steps and a cube root turn them into Oklab values (L, a, b). Then calculate chroma with C = √(a² + b²) and hue with h = atan2(b, a), converted to degrees. To display the color, convert back to RGB. If it falls outside the screen’s color range, bring it back inside. The CSS Color specification and original Oklab article show the full math.

a tiny color duel.

coral Xviolet O

your turn. you’re coral X.

I use OKLCH when adjusting palettes because it makes those changes easier to reason about. RGB still handles the screen part. I also have a few thoughts about how to support the site.

03 / Sponsor spaces

Ads can wait.

The first release has no ads. I may add a few limited, clearly labelled sponsor spaces later to help support the site.

Running a website costs money. Sadly, hosting bills can’t be paid in nice hex codes. A clearly labelled ad in a few places seems reasonable to me. A new popup every time you click something? That’s where I lose patience.

04 / Free software

“Free.” After a quick obstacle course.

The ads bother me when they take over. One on every click, one covering the button, another pretending to be a download. It makes the whole thing feel cheap, even if the tool underneath is good.

I think a lot of software has lost its soul. Everything’s an onboarding flow, a conversion, a reason to upgrade. I miss opening a little website and feeling like a person made it because they cared. There’s room for a useful tool to have a bit of personality. Even a wonky drawing.

I’d like this site to be easier on your patience. That starts with letting you use it.

Chalk drawing of a Persian mosque with blue tiled domes and minarets — IranIsfahan’s tilework.
well, there goes my color palette.psst. the drawing has colors to share.

three little pairs.for a wandering brain.
find the matching doodles.

0 / 3 pairs. pick a card.

05 / What’s free

A color code shouldn’t need a password.

You can browse and save palettes, try them in sample layouts, copy color codes, make your own palette, use the gradient maker, or pick colors from a photo. No sign-up or payment needed. The useful stuff is right there.

I’d like to keep these tools free. If something changes, I’ll explain it here first. Which brings me back to the boring but unavoidable money bit.

Kashmira shikara, a lake,
those autumn leaves.
nature showing off again.tap the drawing. borrow the colors.

06 / How it’s funded

The bills are annoyingly real.

Hosting, development, and maintenance all take something. I’m open to limited, clearly labelled sponsorship helping with those costs. There are no ads in the first release, so the site isn’t earning money from sponsorship yet.

If a sponsor comes along, you’ll be able to tell it’s an ad. My aim is to let it sit alongside the palettes without getting in your way. You shouldn’t have to dodge a window to copy six characters.

I want to be just as straightforward about what happens to your work.

a very small wind farm.tap to lend it a breeze.

07 / Privacy

Your photo stays with you.

Your saved palettes, recent searches, and a few preferences live in your browser. There’s no account or profile attached to them. Clearing your browser’s stored data can clear those saves, too, so keep a copy of anything important.

The photo color picker runs on your device. Your photo isn’t uploaded. Picking some colors shouldn’t require a personal introduction.

If you allow analytics in Privacy choices, Google Analytics uses cookies to measure visits and tool use. It receives the page name and address, browser and device information, and broad referral sources. We don’t send your searches, shared design data, project labels, saved palettes, or uploaded photos.

Analytics stays off until you allow it. Choosing “No thanks” keeps every tool available. You can change your choice using Privacy choices at the bottom of any page; declining stops collection and clears this site’s Analytics cookies. Google’s privacy policy ↗

nine tiny worries.

pop one. let it go.

08 / Pass it along

Send a palette to a friend.

If a makes you go “oh, that’s nice,” send it to a friend. They might be seventeen tabs deep trying to find the right colors. You get to be the person who rescues them. That helps this little site, too.

help as well. I have a list of things to improve, but I’m very capable of missing something obvious. A second pair of eyes is welcome.

09 / What’s next

I’m still making the list.

Better palette search, more useful previews, and fewer little annoyances. That’s where I’d like to spend my time next.

There’s no grand roadmap with fifteen launch dates. I’d rather finish a useful improvement and let you try it. If there’s a thing you keep wishing the palette maker did, I’d like to hear it.

notes to self ↴