Tool Stack

Color Tools

Convert colors, check contrast ratios, generate gradients and palettes — all in your browser.

HEX to RGB & HSL Converter

Convert a HEX color code to its RGB and HSL equivalents with a live color preview.

RGB to HEX & HSL Converter

Enter RGB values (0–255) to get the HEX and HSL equivalents.

HSL to HEX & RGB Converter

Convert HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness) to HEX and RGB color values.

Color Contrast Checker

Check whether two colors meet WCAG AA and AAA accessibility contrast requirements.

CSS Gradient Generator

Generate linear, radial, or conic CSS gradients and copy the CSS code.

Color Palette Generator

Generate a full tonal palette from a base color — from dark to light shades. Click any swatch to copy its HEX code.

About Online Color Tools

Color is one of the most powerful and most misunderstood elements of visual design. A well-chosen color palette communicates brand personality, guides the user's eye through an interface, creates visual hierarchy, and — critically — ensures that content is readable by people with visual impairments. Yet working with color in digital contexts requires fluency in multiple representation systems: HEX codes for CSS stylesheets, RGB values for design tools and canvas APIs, HSL values for programmatic color manipulation, and contrast ratios for accessibility compliance. Our color tools collection provides six interconnected utilities that make working across all these systems fast and accurate.

Understanding the relationship between color models makes you a more effective designer and developer. HEX, RGB, and HSL are simply three different ways of describing the same color — each more convenient in different contexts. HEX is the most compact notation for static stylesheet values. RGB maps directly to how screens physically produce light. HSL separates the perceptual qualities of hue, vividness, and brightness, making it far more intuitive for programmatic color manipulation — to create a lighter tint, simply increase the lightness value; to mute a color, reduce saturation.

Available Tools

  • HEX to RGB & HSL — enter a hexadecimal color code (with or without the # prefix) to get its RGB and HSL equivalents, plus a live color preview swatch.
  • RGB to HEX & HSL — input red, green, and blue values (0–255) to get the matching HEX code and HSL representation.
  • HSL to HEX & RGB — enter hue (0–360°), saturation (0–100%), and lightness (0–100%) to get HEX and RGB values.
  • Color Contrast Checker — input foreground and background colors to calculate the WCAG contrast ratio and see whether the combination passes AA and AAA accessibility standards.
  • CSS Gradient Generator — choose two colors and generate linear, radial, or conic CSS gradient code ready to paste into a stylesheet.
  • Color Palette Generator — supply a base color and generate a full tonal palette from dark to light; click any swatch to copy its HEX code.

Understanding Color Models

The three color models used in web design each have distinct strengths. HEX (hexadecimal) is a six-character code like #FF5733 that encodes red, green, and blue channels as two-digit hex numbers. It is compact and universally understood by browsers, making it the most common format in CSS stylesheets. RGB describes each channel as a decimal number from 0 to 255. It maps directly to how LCD and OLED screens mix red, green, and blue light at the pixel level, making it intuitive for anyone thinking about screen output. HSL stands for Hue, Saturation, Lightness. Hue is the basic color (0° = red, 120° = green, 240° = blue). Saturation controls how vivid or grey the color is. Lightness controls how light or dark it is. HSL is the most human-friendly model for design work — rotating the hue creates analogous colors, while adjusting lightness creates tints and shades of a single color.

Who Uses These Tools?

Web designers and frontend developers use the conversion tools constantly when translating between design files (which often use RGB or HSL) and CSS code (which traditionally uses HEX). UI/UX designers use the contrast checker to verify that their color combinations meet WCAG guidelines before handing designs to development. Brand designers use the palette generator to build cohesive tonal scales from a single primary brand color. Graphic designers use the gradient generator to produce CSS background code that matches a gradient created in a design application. Students learning web design use the converters to build an intuitive understanding of how the three color models relate to each other.

Accessibility and WCAG Contrast Ratios

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) specify minimum contrast ratios between text color and background color to ensure readability for users with low vision or color vision deficiencies. WCAG 2.1 Level AA requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text (18pt or 14pt bold). Level AAA requires 7:1 for normal text and 4.5:1 for large text. Our contrast checker calculates the exact ratio and indicates which levels pass and fail, helping you make accessible color decisions from the start rather than discovering compliance issues during an accessibility audit.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • HEX and RGB describe the same color using different notation. RGB specifies the red, green, and blue components as three decimal numbers from 0 to 255 — for example rgb(110, 168, 254). HEX encodes those same three numbers in base-16 (hexadecimal) notation, so each channel is represented by two characters from 0–9 and A–F — the same color becomes #6EA8FE. They are mathematically equivalent; the choice between them is purely one of convenience. HEX is more compact and the dominant format in CSS. RGB is easier to work with programmatically when you need to do arithmetic on color channels.

  • HSL stands for Hue, Saturation, Lightness. It is an alternative way to describe colors that aligns more closely with human color perception than RGB. Hue is an angle (0–360°) representing the base color on the color wheel. Saturation (0–100%) controls the vividness of the color — 0% is grey, 100% is fully saturated. Lightness (0–100%) controls brightness — 0% is black, 100% is white, 50% is the pure color. HSL is particularly useful in CSS when you want to create color variations programmatically. For example, changing only the lightness value produces tints and shades of the same color, which is ideal for generating hover states, disabled states, or tonal palettes.

  • WCAG 2.1 defines two compliance levels. Level AA (the minimum recommended for most websites) requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for body text and 3:1 for large text (18pt regular or 14pt bold). Level AAA (enhanced accessibility) requires 7:1 for body text and 4.5:1 for large text. The contrast ratio is calculated from the relative luminance of the two colors — pure black on pure white has a ratio of 21:1, the maximum possible. If your text fails AA, try darkening the text color or lightening the background. Our contrast checker shows the exact ratio and a clear pass/fail result for both AA and AAA at both text sizes.

  • Use the Color Palette Generator. Enter your primary brand color as a HEX code — for example the blue from your logo. Click Generate Palette and the tool will produce a full tonal scale from very dark to very light, derived from your base color. You will typically use the darkest shades for text on light backgrounds, mid-range shades for primary buttons and interactive elements, and light shades for backgrounds and hover states. Click any swatch to copy its HEX code directly to your clipboard. A good brand palette typically consists of 5–10 shades of the primary color, supplemented by neutral greys and one or two accent colors for calls to action.