Skip to content

Chinese Palette

Vermillion, coral and true blue over a complete grey ramp. The only palette in the collection that ships pure white.

Live preview

Everything below is the real component. Change the controls, tab through it, and turn on Inspector Mode to read any value off the screen.

20 colours
Drawn by Wenjun for Flat UI Colors 2.Original
Click any swatch to copy its value.

01 · Text colours

A palette ships hues, not a text ramp. These five are solved against the page background rather than mixed by percentage — "secondary" means 8:1 on every one of the fourteen palettes, so the pages stay comparable and none of them ships a ramp that fails. Disabled sits below the floor deliberately; it is the one role WCAG exempts.

PrimaryHeadings and high emphasis#f5f5f5Derived · White softened to 96% lightness — pure white on a page this dark haloes14.25:1
SecondaryBody copy#b9babdDerived · solved to 8:1 on the page8.01:1
TertiarySupporting detail#989a9dDerived · solved to 5.5:15.51:1
MutedCaptions, metadata, placeholders#888b8fDerived · solved to 4.5:1 — the floor for body text4.54:1
DisabledInactive — formally exempt from contrast#61646aDerived · solved to 2.6:1, deliberately below the floor2.62:1

02 · Surfaces and backgrounds

Anchored on Prestige Blue, the darkest colour in the set. The rest of the ladder is computed, because no palette ships two darks that happen to sit 16% apart — and depth read from surface lightness is the only kind that survives greyscale, high-contrast mode and a phone in sunlight.

Page backgroundThe furthest-back plane#20242dDerived · 32% toward black from Prestige Blue
SurfaceCards, panels, the default plane#272d37Derived · 16% toward black from Prestige Blue
Surface elevatedMenus, dialogs, anything raised#2f3542Row 2, Col 5 · Prestige Blue
Surface hoverPointer over a row or a card#3e434fDerived · 7% toward white from the elevated surface
BorderDividers and default edges#434850Derived · solved to 1.5:1 on the surface — visible, not loud1.50:1
Border strongInputs, checkboxes, anything you can click#72757cDerived · solved to 3:1 — the floor for a control boundary3.00:1

03 · Semantic colours

Primary is the palette’s opening colour — designers lead with their signature. The status roles are the nearest hue this palette carries to each target, which is the honest version of a choice usually made by eye. Hover prefers a darker sibling the designer actually drew; active is always computed. Where a role sits far from its ideal hue, the row says so.

PrimaryRow 1, Col 1 · Golden Sand — the palette's opening colour
base#eccc68
hover#ffa502
active#b39b4f

Label on the fill: the page colour at 9.92:1 · Hover is a palette colour.

SuccessRow 3, Col 1 · Lime Soap
base#7bed9f
hover#2ed573
active#5db479

Label on the fill: the page colour at 10.70:1 · Hover is a palette colour.

InfoRow 3, Col 2 · French Sky Blue
base#70a1ff
hover#1e90ff
active#557ac2

Label on the fill: the page colour at 6.09:1 · Hover is a palette colour.

WarningRow 1, Col 2 · Coral
base#ff7f50
hover#e07046
active#c2613d

Label on the fill: the page colour at 6.22:1 · Hover is derived.

DangerRow 1, Col 3 · Wild Watermelon
base#ff6b81
hover#ff4757
active#c25162

Label on the fill: the page colour at 5.68:1 · Hover is a palette colour.

AccentRow 3, Col 3 · Saturated Sky — 48° off the ideal accent hue, the nearest this palette carries
base#5352ed
hover#4948d1
active#3f3eb4

Label on the fill: white at 5.53:1 · Hover is derived.

04 · Component examples

The moment the palette stops being a picture. Filled, outlined and text buttons across five roles, four field states, and the selection controls — a colour that read as confident in a swatch grid often cannot hold a five-character label, and there is no way to discover that except by putting the label on it.

Buttons

filledPrimarySuccessInfoWarningDangerDisabled
outlinedPrimarySuccessInfoWarningDangerDisabled
textPrimarySuccessInfoWarningDangerDisabled

Input fields

DefaultInput text
FocusInput text
FilledInput text
DisabledInput text

Checkbox, radio and switch

CheckedUncheckedDisabled
SelectedUnselectedDisabledOnOff

05 · Chart colours

Eight hues spread around the circle, each required to clear 3:1 against the page — under WCAG 1.4.11 a chart mark is a meaningful graphic, so a series nobody can see is not a style choice. This set is kept separate from the semantic roles on purpose: a series that happens to be red must not read as a failure.

#ff6348#ffa502#eccc68#2ed573#dfe4ea#70a1ff#f1f2f6#ff4757
Direct24%Organic18%Social14%Referral12%Email10%Paid search9%Affiliate8%Other5%

Eight hues spread around the circle, every one of them measured at 3:1 or better against this page — a chart mark is a meaningful graphic, not decoration. None of them carries a status meaning, which is the entire reason this set is separate from the one above.

06 · Alerts and notifications

The four status roles doing the job they exist for, each with an icon and a word alongside the fill. Run these through a greyscale filter — if you can still tell the error from the success, colour was reinforcing the message rather than carrying it.

Success. Your changes have been saved.
Info. This is an informational message.
Warning. Please check your input carefully.
Error. Something went wrong. Try again.

Every one of these carries an icon and a word as well as a fill. Remove the colour and the four are still distinguishable — which is the test, because for a good number of readers the colour was never there.

07 · Elevation

The one part of the system that is not derived from the palette and never should be. Shadows are black at rising alpha on every palette on earth; on a page this dark they barely register, which is why the surface ladder in section 02 is what actually carries depth.

Level 0FlatPage, and anything not raised
Level 1RaisedCards at rest
Level 2HoverA card under the pointer
Level 3OverlayMenus and popovers
Level 4ModalDialogs and drawers

Black at rising alpha, on every palette. A shadow is the absence of light, so tinting it with the brand hue is how a dark theme starts looking bruised. On very dark pages the shadow does almost nothing and the surface ladder above is what carries depth.

Do

Take the hues, rebuild the rampTwenty flat values is a mood board, not a system. Lift the hues you want, generate a perceptually even ramp from each, and put those in the semantic tier — that is what makes the palette themeable, auditable and extensible.
Use it where colour carries no valenceCharts, tags, avatars, calendar categories. These are the jobs a decorative palette is genuinely good at, because nothing here has to mean "this failed" to someone who cannot see it.
Prestige BlueWhite
Reach for Prestige Blue and White before the middleThe ends do the structural work. Prestige Blue #2f3542 is the darkest value here — 12.29:1 on white — and White #ffffff the lightest, at 21.00:1 on black. A palette's usable contrast lives at its extremes, and the extremes are the two swatches people skip.

Don't

Do not map these onto success, warning and dangerA status colour has to clear 4.5:1 against the surface it sits on, in both themes, next to an icon and a word. These were drawn to look good in a grid. The two requirements overlap by accident, never by design.
Do not paste the hex into a componentA literal hex cannot be themed, cannot be audited, and cannot be found later. Every one of these values belongs behind a custom property, exactly like the values in our own token tiers.
Do not call a colour accessible without naming the surface4 of these 20 can set body text on a white page and 16 can on a black one — and none manage both. The two sets are nearly disjoint by arithmetic, not by taste. Pick the surface first and the palette divides itself.

Accessibility

Not a checklist to run at the end. These are the requirements the component was built from.

1.4.1Use of ColorA1.4.3Contrast (Minimum)AA1.4.11Non-text ContrastAA

Contrast

  • 4 of 20 colours clear 4.5:1 against white and can carry body text on a light page. 16 clear it against black. None do both.
  • Those two sets are nearly disjoint for a reason, not by accident: a colour’s contrast with white multiplied by its contrast with black is always exactly 21. Clearing 4.5:1 on one surface leaves at most 4.67:1 on the other.
  • 7 of 20 reach 3:1 on white, which is the bar for large text, icons, borders and chart marks — a much larger set, and the one most of this palette is genuinely for.
  • White and black are the bounds, not our surfaces. Against a real canvas the numbers move, and alpha moves them again — composite first or the ratio is fiction.

Keyboard

TabMoves through the swatches; each one is a button that copies its value.
⌘IInspector Mode reports the live contrast of anything on this page.

Screen readers

  • A colour has no accessible meaning. If a chart series is identified only by its fill, the series does not exist for a screen reader — label it directly or provide the table.
  • Colour names like “Jigglypuff” or “Wet Asphalt” are identifiers, not descriptions. Never use one as the only label for a state.

Focus & touch

  • Swatches take the standard focus ring, offset outwards. An inset ring would have to sit on the colour being demonstrated and would fail contrast on roughly half of these values.
  • Swatches are 88px tall and at least 152px wide, comfortably past the 44px minimum, so the copy affordance is reachable on a phone without a precise tap.
AttributeApplied toNotes
aria-labelEach swatchNames the colour and its value, because the swatch itself announces as nothing — a background colour is invisible to a screen reader.
forced-colors: activeMedia queryWindows High Contrast Mode discards this palette wholesale. Anything that was only distinguishable by fill becomes identical.

Code

Example usage

What this palette is for, and what it is not for.

tsx
1// A borrowed palette is categorical data, not a set of semantics.2// Bind it to series, not to states.3const CN_SERIES = [4  'var(--flat-cn-golden-sand)', // Golden Sand5  'var(--flat-cn-twinkle-blue)', // Twinkle Blue6  'var(--flat-cn-lime-soap)', // Lime Soap7  'var(--flat-cn-city-lights)', // City Lights8  'var(--flat-cn-anti-flash-white)', // Anti-Flash White9  'var(--flat-cn-white)', // White10]1112<Chart series={data} colors={CN_SERIES} />1314// Text on any of them uses the measured pair, never a guess.15// Golden Sand takes #000000 at 13.40:1.16<span style={{17  background: 'var(--flat-cn-golden-sand)',18  color: '#000000',19}}>20  Golden Sand21</span>

CSS

The twenty plus the 37 they were expanded into. 11 of those are literal palette colours; the rest are computed, and each carries the arithmetic that produced it.

css
/* ---- The twenty, verbatim. Namespaced, so a borrowed value can never
        be mistaken for one of ours. ---------------------------------------- */
/* Chinese Palette — Wenjun, Flat UI Colors 2 */
:root {
  --flat-cn-golden-sand: #eccc68;
  --flat-cn-coral: #ff7f50;
  --flat-cn-wild-watermelon: #ff6b81;
  --flat-cn-peace: #a4b0be;
  --flat-cn-grisaille: #57606f;
  --flat-cn-orange: #ffa502;
  --flat-cn-bruschetta-tomato: #ff6348;
  --flat-cn-watermelon: #ff4757;
  --flat-cn-bay-wharf: #747d8c;
  --flat-cn-prestige-blue: #2f3542;
  --flat-cn-lime-soap: #7bed9f;
  --flat-cn-french-sky-blue: #70a1ff;
  --flat-cn-saturated-sky: #5352ed;
  --flat-cn-white: #ffffff;
  --flat-cn-city-lights: #dfe4ea;
  --flat-cn-ufo-green: #2ed573;
  --flat-cn-clear-chill: #1e90ff;
  --flat-cn-bright-greek: #3742fa;
  --flat-cn-anti-flash-white: #f1f2f6;
  --flat-cn-twinkle-blue: #ced6e0;
}

/* ---- The system derived from them. This is the half a palette does not
        ship, and the half a product cannot be built without. -------------- */
/* Chinese Palette — a dark theme derived from the twenty.
   Wenjun, Flat UI Colors 2. Values marked "taken" are the palette's own;
   everything else is computed from them by the rules on this page. */
:root {
  /* surfaces */
  --cn-page: #20242d;                     /* derived */
  --cn-surface: #272d37;                  /* derived */
  --cn-elevated: #2f3542;                 /* taken */
  --cn-hover: #3e434f;                    /* derived */
  --cn-border: #434850;                   /* derived */
  --cn-border-strong: #72757c;            /* derived */

  /* text */
  --cn-text: #f5f5f5;                     /* 14.3:1 on the page */
  --cn-text-secondary: #b9babd;           /* 8.0:1 on the page */
  --cn-text-tertiary: #989a9d;            /* 5.5:1 on the page */
  --cn-text-muted: #888b8f;               /* 4.5:1 on the page */
  --cn-text-disabled: #61646a;            /* 2.6:1 on the page */

  /* semantic */
  --cn-primary: #eccc68;                  /* taken */
  --cn-primary-hover: #ffa502;            /* taken */
  --cn-primary-active: #b39b4f;           /* derived */
  --cn-primary-on: #20242d;               /* 9.9:1 on the fill */
  --cn-success: #7bed9f;                  /* taken */
  --cn-success-hover: #2ed573;            /* taken */
  --cn-success-active: #5db479;           /* derived */
  --cn-success-on: #20242d;               /* 10.7:1 on the fill */
  --cn-info: #70a1ff;                     /* taken */
  --cn-info-hover: #1e90ff;               /* taken */
  --cn-info-active: #557ac2;              /* derived */
  --cn-info-on: #20242d;                  /* 6.1:1 on the fill */
  --cn-warning: #ff7f50;                  /* taken */
  --cn-warning-hover: #e07046;            /* derived */
  --cn-warning-active: #c2613d;           /* derived */
  --cn-warning-on: #20242d;               /* 6.2:1 on the fill */
  --cn-danger: #ff6b81;                   /* taken */
  --cn-danger-hover: #ff4757;             /* taken */
  --cn-danger-active: #c25162;            /* derived */
  --cn-danger-on: #20242d;                /* 5.7:1 on the fill */
  --cn-accent: #5352ed;                   /* taken */
  --cn-accent-hover: #4948d1;             /* derived */
  --cn-accent-active: #3f3eb4;            /* derived */
  --cn-accent-on: #ffffff;                /* 5.5:1 on the fill */

  /* categorical — never status */
  --cn-chart-1: #ff6348;                  /* Bruschetta Tomato */
  --cn-chart-2: #ffa502;                  /* Orange */
  --cn-chart-3: #eccc68;                  /* Golden Sand */
  --cn-chart-4: #2ed573;                  /* UFO Green */
  --cn-chart-5: #dfe4ea;                  /* City Lights */
  --cn-chart-6: #70a1ff;                  /* French Sky Blue */
  --cn-chart-7: #f1f2f6;                  /* Anti-Flash White */
  --cn-chart-8: #ff4757;                  /* Watermelon */

  /* elevation — black, never the brand hue */
  --cn-elevation-1: 0 1px 3px rgb(0 0 0 / 0.12);/* raised */
  --cn-elevation-2: 0 4px 6px rgb(0 0 0 / 0.16);/* hover */
  --cn-elevation-3: 0 10px 20px rgb(0 0 0 / 0.20);/* overlay */
  --cn-elevation-4: 0 16px 32px rgb(0 0 0 / 0.24);/* modal */
}

Notes

Professional tips

  • Vermillion, coral and true blue over a complete grey ramp. The only palette in the collection that ships pure white.
  • Darkest value: Prestige Blue #2f3542. Lightest: White #ffffff. Between them sits every ramp you could build from this set.
  • Sort the sheet by Hue to find neighbours you can safely put side by side, and by Lightness to find the ones that can carry text. Source order is the designer’s order and tells you about their intent, not about contrast.
  • If you only need one colour from this palette, take it and leave the rest. Adopting twenty because you liked one is how a product ends up with two palettes.

Common mistakes

  • Using the palette at full saturation across a whole screen. These were drawn as accents against neutral ground; twenty of them at once is a swatch page, not an interface.
  • Assuming the names mean something. They are memorable, not systematic — “Light Red” is darker than “Pastel Red” in the palette next door.
  • Copying the hexes into a design file and the CSS separately. They will drift, and the design file will win the argument for about six months.

Real-world recommendations

  • Credit stays attached: this set was drawn by Wenjun (@wenjunliao on Dribbble) and published in Flat UI Colors 2 by Ahmet Sülek.
  • Palettes like this one age visibly. A 2013 flat palette reads as 2013 — which is useful when that is the intent and a liability when it is not.
  • The fastest legitimate use is prototyping: grab a palette, get the categorical colours out of the way, and spend the argument you saved on hierarchy instead.

Contrast reference

The measurement behind every derivation above. White and black bound what a colour can do, and reading a row in both directions gives you both answers at once — 4.86:1 on white is equally “this as text on a white page” and “white as a label on this fill”. The last column is what people mean when they ask whether a colour is accessible, and it is almost never both.

ColourOn whiteOn blackInk on
Prestige Blue#2f3542Aa12.29AAAAa1.71FailLight only
Grisaille#57606fAa6.35AAAa3.31AA LargeLight only
Bright Greek#3742faAa6.32AAAa3.32AA LargeLight only
Saturated Sky#5352edAa5.53AAAa3.80AA LargeLight only
Bay Wharf#747d8cAa4.15AA LargeAa5.05AADark only
Watermelon#ff4757Aa3.34AA LargeAa6.29AADark only
Clear Chill#1e90ffAa3.24AA LargeAa6.49AADark only
Bruschetta Tomato#ff6348Aa2.95FailAa7.13AAADark only
Wild Watermelon#ff6b81Aa2.74FailAa7.67AAADark only
French Sky Blue#70a1ffAa2.55FailAa8.23AAADark only
Coral#ff7f50Aa2.50FailAa8.40AAADark only
Peace#a4b0beAa2.20FailAa9.53AAADark only
Orange#ffa502Aa1.97FailAa10.63AAADark only
UFO Green#2ed573Aa1.93FailAa10.88AAADark only
Golden Sand#eccc68Aa1.57FailAa13.40AAADark only
Twinkle Blue#ced6e0Aa1.47FailAa14.32AAADark only
Lime Soap#7bed9fAa1.45FailAa14.46AAADark only
City Lights#dfe4eaAa1.28FailAa16.42AAADark only
Anti-Flash White#f1f2f6Aa1.12FailAa18.77AAADark only
White#ffffffAa1.00FailAa21.00AAADark only