🎨 Color Mixer Tool
Professional color mixing tool that blends colors using RGB and HSL algorithms. Features real-time preview, multiple output formats, blend ratio controls, and color palette generation for web design, digital art, and color theory learning.
Color Blend Results:
Red Coral + Turquoise → Perfect Blend
50% blend ratio • RGB color space
🔄 Input Colors
✨ Blended Result (50% mix)
🌈 Color Gradient (10 steps)
How to Use This Color Mixer Tool
The Color Mixer Tool provides professional-grade color blending with real-time visual feedback and multiple output formats. Perfect for designers, artists, and developers who need precise color control and harmonious palettes.
- Choose Your Colors: Use the color pickers to select your primary and secondary colors, or enter precise HEX codes for exact color specification. The tool accepts any valid web colors.
- Adjust Blend Ratio: Move the blend ratio slider to control the mixing percentage. 0% gives you pure primary color, 50% creates an equal blend, and 100% gives you pure secondary color.
- Configure Gradient: Set the number of gradient steps (3-20) to create smooth color transitions. More steps create finer gradations perfect for subtle design work.
- Select Blending Method: Choose RGB for standard web colors, HSL for natural color transitions, or LAB for perceptually accurate blending that matches human vision.
- Choose Output Format: Select HEX, RGB, HSL, CSS variables, or all formats to get color codes in your preferred format for immediate use in design software.
Enable detailed color information to see RGB values, HSL coordinates, color temperature, and accessibility contrast ratios. Generate downloadable palettes to get PNG swatches and CSS files for your projects.
How It Works
The Color Mixer Tool uses advanced color space mathematics to blend colors with professional accuracy and visual appeal.
- Color Space Conversion: Input colors are converted to the selected color space (RGB, HSL, or LAB) for mathematical blending operations
- Linear Interpolation: Colors are blended using linear interpolation algorithms that calculate intermediate values between your chosen colors
- Gamma Correction: RGB blending applies proper sRGB gamma correction to ensure accurate color reproduction on modern displays
- Real-time Preview: Changes are calculated instantly using efficient JavaScript algorithms, providing immediate visual feedback
- Multiple Format Output: Blended colors are converted to all standard web formats (HEX, RGB, HSL) and formatted for CSS use
- Accessibility Analysis: Contrast ratios are calculated using WCAG 2.1 formulas to ensure color combinations meet accessibility standards
- Palette Generation: Canvas API creates downloadable PNG images with color swatches and generates CSS files with custom properties
All processing occurs in your browser using native JavaScript and Canvas APIs, ensuring privacy and eliminating the need for external dependencies or network requests.
When You Might Need This
- • Web designers creating custom color schemes for websites and applications
- • Digital artists blending colors for illustrations, paintings, and concept art
- • Graphic designers developing brand color palettes with consistent harmonies
- • Interior designers exploring paint color combinations for rooms and spaces
- • Fashion designers mixing fabric colors and creating seasonal color collections
- • UI/UX designers testing color accessibility and contrast ratios for interfaces
- • Students learning color theory and understanding how different hues interact
- • Photographers adjusting color grading and creating mood-specific color palettes
- • Marketing professionals developing brand colors that evoke specific emotions
- • Game developers creating atmosphere through environmental color mixing and gradients
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the difference between RGB, HSL, and LAB color mixing?
RGB mixing blends colors in the red-green-blue color space used by computer screens, creating linear mathematical blends. HSL mixing works in hue-saturation-lightness space, producing more natural color transitions that match how we perceive color relationships. LAB mixing uses a perceptually uniform color space that most closely matches human vision, creating the most accurate and pleasing color blends. For most web design work, RGB is sufficient, but HSL produces better results for artistic applications.
How do I create a harmonious color palette using the color mixer?
Start with one base color and mix it with colors at specific intervals on the color wheel. For complementary harmony, mix your base color with its opposite (180° apart). For triadic harmony, mix with colors 120° apart. For analogous harmony, mix with adjacent colors (30° apart). Use the HSL blending mode for the most natural transitions, and adjust the blend ratio to create multiple shades. The gradient preview shows how colors transition, helping you identify the most pleasing intermediate colors.
Can I use this tool to check color accessibility and contrast?
Yes, when you enable 'Show detailed color information', the tool displays contrast ratios between your blended colors and provides accessibility ratings based on WCAG guidelines. It shows whether color combinations meet AA or AAA standards for normal text, large text, and UI components. This is essential for web design to ensure your color choices are readable for users with visual impairments. The tool also suggests adjustments if contrast ratios are too low.
What file formats can I download from the color mixer?
The tool generates both PNG images and CSS files when you enable palette generation. The PNG file contains color swatches with hex codes, perfect for design mockups and client presentations. The CSS file includes CSS custom properties (variables) for all blended colors, making it easy to implement your palette directly in web projects. You can also copy individual color codes in HEX, RGB, HSL, or CSS variable format for immediate use in your design software.
How many colors can I blend at once, and can I create gradients?
Currently, the tool blends two colors at a time, but you can create smooth gradients with up to 20 intermediate steps between your chosen colors. This effectively gives you a palette of 20+ colors in a single blend operation. For more complex palettes, you can run multiple blend operations using different color pairs, then combine the results. The gradient preview shows all intermediate colors, and you can download the entire gradient as a PNG palette or CSS file with all color values included.