Colour Name Generator

How the Colour Name Generator (From A Hex Value) works

How the colour name generator decides hue and tone

A colour in a design system, a palette or a product range needs a name that people can say and remember, and a name that fits the actual hue and tone is harder to make than it looks, because Dusty Rose on a vivid magenta or Midnight Navy on a pale blue reads as wrong at once, which is why this page classifies the hex first and picks its words second. The hex is converted to hue, saturation and lightness in the browser; the hue angle falls into one of twelve families, red, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, purple, pink, brown, grey, white and black, with dark oranges and yellows read as brown and low-saturation colours read as grey, white or black; and the lightness and saturation fall into a tone, pale, light, mid, deep, dark, vivid or muted. Every word list is nested on those two, so a colour word, a material, an object, a food and a mood are drawn from the family, and the descriptive adjective from the tone. The paint-chart convention, Harbour Slate, Tuscan Ochre, Slate No. 214, is a place or a wearing word and the material that is the colour, the register of a heritage chart; the fashion convention, Dusty Cornflower, Autumn Rust, Velvet Plum, is an adjective or a season and a colour word, the register of a clothing colourway; the descriptive convention, Deep Blue, Muted Sage, Vivid Tangerine, is the tone and the colour said plainly, the register of a design token; the poetic convention, Ink at Dusk, Harbour Calm, Reverie, is an object at a time or a single mood word, the register of a candle or a cosmetic; the material convention, Slate, Verdigris, Denim, is the thing that is that colour, the register of an interiors range; and the food convention, Blueberry, Cocoa, Pistachio, is the edible thing that is, the register of a supermarket own-brand.

The names are colour words, materials, objects and ordinary English fitted to the hex, so a result is a new combination rather than a catalogue lookup by design; this page does not know the nearest named web colour or Pantone reference and does not try to, it names the colour the way a brand would. Paint, cosmetic and fashion colour names are trademarked in their classes and the material and food conventions are crowded, so search a name before printing a real chart and treat a coincidence as likely.

For a whole paint chart in the heritage conventions, the Paint colour name page; for a nail polish or a lipstick in the same shade, the Nail polish name and Lipstick shade name pages; for the hex value itself, its contrast and its nearest web colour, the Colour tools in the Design section; for a palette built around it, the Analogous colours and Complementary colours pages; and for the perfume in a bottle of that colour, the Perfume name page.

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