A colorblind-safe color palette for your figures
Pick a research-grade scientific color palette, preview it exactly as readers with color vision deficiency see it, and copy the color palette straight into matplotlib, R or CSS. No sign-in, no credits.
This scheme is designed to be colorblind-safe. Try the vision modes above to confirm.
Why a colorblind-safe color palette matters
Roughly 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some form of color vision deficiency. The color palette you pick decides whether your figure reads — or misleads.
Reach every reader
About 8% of male readers can't reliably tell red from green. A safe palette keeps your message intact for reviewers, editors and your audience.
Survive grayscale and projectors
Schemes like Viridis and Cividis stay perceptually ordered even when printed in black and white or shown on a washed-out projector.
Meet journal standards
Nature, PLOS and other publishers now ask for accessible figures. Starting from a colorblind-safe scientific color palette gets you there by default.
Three steps to an accessible color palette
Choose a scheme
Pick categorical, sequential or diverging, then a curated base like Okabe-Ito, Viridis or ColorBrewer — and set how many colors you need.
Preview the vision modes
Toggle protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia to see your exact colors as those readers do, with collisions flagged automatically.
Copy into your tool
Copy a single hex with one click, or grab the whole palette as a HEX list, CSS variables, a matplotlib list or an R vector.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this color palette generator free?
- Yes — this color palette tool runs entirely in your browser, with no account, no sign-in and no credits. Pick a scheme, test it and copy the colors.
- What does the colorblind preview actually do?
- It transforms each color through a standard dichromacy simulation (protanopia, deuteranopia or tritanopia) so you see your figure roughly as those readers would, then flags adjacent colors that become hard to tell apart.
- Which palettes are included?
- Curated, research-friendly schemes: the Okabe-Ito and Paul Tol categorical sets, ColorBrewer qualitative, sequential maps like Viridis, Cividis and Blues, and diverging maps like RdBu, PuOr and BrBG — all chosen to be colorblind-safe.
- Can I use this color palette in matplotlib or R?
- Yes. Copy the palette as a Python matplotlib list, an R vector, CSS custom properties, or a plain HEX list, and paste it straight into your plotting code.
- Is a 'safe' palette guaranteed to be readable?
- These schemes are designed to maximize distinguishability, but readability also depends on how many colors you use and your chart type. Use the vision-mode preview and the collision warnings to confirm before you publish.
Pick colors everyone can read.
Start from a colorblind-safe scientific color palette here, then bring it into a publication-ready figure in the LabFig workbench.