Color Palette Collection
Nazmul Hussain
Project Overview
This hobby project is a color palette and accessibility utility built to help web designers and developers choose colors confidently for real-world websites. The goal was to go beyond just showing colors and to provide practical usability and accessibility checks, as well as real UI context.
The tool allows users to explore a color’s variations, understand accessibility compliance, and see how colors behave in actual UI usage.
Problem Statement
Choosing colors for websites is not just about aesthetics. Designers and developers often face challenges like:
Finding lighter/darker variations manually
Ensuring text meets WCAG accessibility standards
Understanding contrast with both light and dark backgrounds
Visualizing how a color works in real UI elements
Most palette tools either focus only on colors or only on accessibility—rarely both in a practical way.
Solution
I built a web-based color palette tool that combines color theory, accessibility checks, and usage previews in one place.
Each selected color provides:
Complete color information
Automatic variations
Accessibility contrast validation
Real UI usage examples
This makes the tool useful for developers, designers, and accessibility-conscious teams.
Key Features
1. Color Information
For every selected color, the tool displays:
HEX
RGBA
HSL
This allows easy copying and direct usage in CSS, design tools, or component libraries.
2. Color Variations
Each color automatically generates multiple variations:
Lighter
Darker
Saturated
Desaturated
This helps in building:
Design systems
Button states (hover, active)
Background and accent combinations
All variations are derived programmatically to maintain consistency.
3. Accessibility & WCAG Contrast Checks
Accessibility is a core focus of this project.
The tool calculates:
Contrast ratio with white
Contrast ratio with black
For each case, it clearly indicates:
Whether the color passes or fails WCAG AA
Specific messages like:
✗ Does not pass WCAG AA for normal text
This allows developers to make informed decisions early rather than fix accessibility issues later.
4. Usage Examples
To make the colors more practical, the tool includes visual usage previews:
Text with background color
Text without background
UI-style examples showing readability and contrast
This bridges the gap between theory and real UI usage.
Tech Stack
Frontend: React
Styling: Modern CSS / Utility-first approach
Color calculations: Custom logic for HSL, saturation, and contrast ratios
Accessibility logic based on the WCAG contrast formula
Key Learnings
Accessibility should be built into tools, not treated as an afterthought
Visual previews significantly improve decision-making compared to raw color codes
Developers benefit from tools that mirror real UI usage, not just abstract values
Outcome
This project resulted in a practical, developer-friendly color tool that:
Saves time during UI development
Encourages accessibility-first design
Helps build consistent and usable color systems
It also strengthened my experience in:
Color theory
Accessibility standards (WCAG)
Building utility-focused frontend tools with React
About Me
Color Palette Collection
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Posted Jan 2, 2026
The tool provides complete color details in HEX, RGBA, and HSL, along with automatic variations such as lighter, darker, saturated, and desaturated versions.
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