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French Palette

Soft pastels grading evenly into deep sea blues. The smoothest light-to-dark progression of the set, which makes it the easiest to build a ramp from.

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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 Léa Poisson 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#f6f5f4Derived · near-white holding 8% of Flat Flesh's hue — this palette ships no neutral pale enough for body copy15.81:1
SecondaryBody copy#acb1bdDerived · solved to 8:1 on the page8.02:1
TertiarySupporting detail#8b92a4Derived · solved to 5.5:15.53:1
MutedCaptions, metadata, placeholders#7b8298Derived · solved to 4.5:1 — the floor for body text4.50:1
DisabledInactive — formally exempt from contrast#525d79Derived · solved to 2.6:1, deliberately below the floor2.62:1

02 · Surfaces and backgrounds

Anchored on Dark Sapphire, 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#081842Derived · 32% toward black from Dark Sapphire
SurfaceCards, panels, the default plane#0a1e51Derived · 16% toward black from Dark Sapphire
Surface elevatedMenus, dialogs, anything raised#0c2461Row 4, Col 3 · Dark Sapphire
Surface hoverPointer over a row or a card#1d336cDerived · 7% toward white from the elevated surface
BorderDividers and default edges#2c3d69Derived · solved to 1.5:1 on the surface — visible, not loud1.50:1
Border strongInputs, checkboxes, anything you can click#5f6b8bDerived · solved to 3:1 — the floor for a control boundary3.01:1

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 · Flat Flesh — the palette's opening colour
base#fad390
hover#f6b93b
active#bea06d

Label on the fill: the page colour at 12.12:1 · Hover is a palette colour.

SuccessRow 2, Col 5 · Aurora Green
base#78e08f
hover#6ac57e
active#5baa6d

Label on the fill: the page colour at 10.54:1 · Hover is derived.

InfoRow 2, Col 4 · Dupain
base#60a3bc
hover#3c6382
active#497c8f

Label on the fill: the page colour at 6.12:1 · Hover is a palette colour.

WarningRow 1, Col 2 · Melon Melody
base#f8c291
hover#fa983a
active#bc936e

Label on the fill: the page colour at 10.75:1 · Hover is a palette colour.

DangerRow 2, Col 2 · Mandarin Red
base#e55039
hover#ca4632
active#ae3d2b

Label on the fill: the page colour at 4.54:1 · Hover is derived.

AccentRow 1, Col 3 · Livid — 67° off the ideal accent hue, the nearest this palette carries
base#6a89cc
hover#4a69bd
active#51689b

Label on the fill: the page colour at 4.97:1 · Hover is a palette colour.

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.

#e55039#f8c291#e58e26#f6b93b#78e08f#38ada9#60a3bc#4a69bd
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.
Dark SapphireParadise Green
Reach for Dark Sapphire and Paradise Green before the middleThe ends do the structural work. Dark Sapphire #0c2461 is the darkest value here — 14.58:1 on white — and Paradise Green #b8e994 the lightest, at 15.12:1 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 surface6 of these 20 can set body text on a white page and 14 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

  • 6 of 20 colours clear 4.5:1 against white and can carry body text on a light page. 14 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.
  • 10 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 FR_SERIES = [4  'var(--flat-fr-spray)', // Spray5  'var(--flat-fr-squash-blossom)', // Squash Blossom6  'var(--flat-fr-aurora-green)', // Aurora Green7  'var(--flat-fr-melon-melody)', // Melon Melody8  'var(--flat-fr-flat-flesh)', // Flat Flesh9  'var(--flat-fr-paradise-green)', // Paradise Green10]1112<Chart series={data} colors={FR_SERIES} />1314// Text on any of them uses the measured pair, never a guess.15// Flat Flesh takes #000000 at 14.79:1.16<span style={{17  background: 'var(--flat-fr-flat-flesh)',18  color: '#000000',19}}>20  Flat Flesh21</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. ---------------------------------------- */
/* French Palette — Léa Poisson, Flat UI Colors 2 */
:root {
  --flat-fr-flat-flesh: #fad390;
  --flat-fr-melon-melody: #f8c291;
  --flat-fr-livid: #6a89cc;
  --flat-fr-spray: #82ccdd;
  --flat-fr-paradise-green: #b8e994;
  --flat-fr-squash-blossom: #f6b93b;
  --flat-fr-mandarin-red: #e55039;
  --flat-fr-azraq-blue: #4a69bd;
  --flat-fr-dupain: #60a3bc;
  --flat-fr-aurora-green: #78e08f;
  --flat-fr-iceland-poppy: #fa983a;
  --flat-fr-tomato-red: #eb2f06;
  --flat-fr-yu-gu-ng-l-n-blue: #1e3799;
  --flat-fr-good-samaritan: #3c6382;
  --flat-fr-waterfall: #38ada9;
  --flat-fr-carrot-orange: #e58e26;
  --flat-fr-jalapeno-red: #b71540;
  --flat-fr-dark-sapphire: #0c2461;
  --flat-fr-forest-blues: #0a3d62;
  --flat-fr-reef-encounter: #079992;
}

/* ---- The system derived from them. This is the half a palette does not
        ship, and the half a product cannot be built without. -------------- */
/* French Palette — a dark theme derived from the twenty.
   Léa Poisson, 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 */
  --fr-page: #081842;                     /* derived */
  --fr-surface: #0a1e51;                  /* derived */
  --fr-elevated: #0c2461;                 /* taken */
  --fr-hover: #1d336c;                    /* derived */
  --fr-border: #2c3d69;                   /* derived */
  --fr-border-strong: #5f6b8b;            /* derived */

  /* text */
  --fr-text: #f6f5f4;                     /* 15.8:1 on the page */
  --fr-text-secondary: #acb1bd;           /* 8.0:1 on the page */
  --fr-text-tertiary: #8b92a4;            /* 5.5:1 on the page */
  --fr-text-muted: #7b8298;               /* 4.5:1 on the page */
  --fr-text-disabled: #525d79;            /* 2.6:1 on the page */

  /* semantic */
  --fr-primary: #fad390;                  /* taken */
  --fr-primary-hover: #f6b93b;            /* taken */
  --fr-primary-active: #bea06d;           /* derived */
  --fr-primary-on: #081842;               /* 12.1:1 on the fill */
  --fr-success: #78e08f;                  /* taken */
  --fr-success-hover: #6ac57e;            /* derived */
  --fr-success-active: #5baa6d;           /* derived */
  --fr-success-on: #081842;               /* 10.5:1 on the fill */
  --fr-info: #60a3bc;                     /* taken */
  --fr-info-hover: #3c6382;               /* taken */
  --fr-info-active: #497c8f;              /* derived */
  --fr-info-on: #081842;                  /* 6.1:1 on the fill */
  --fr-warning: #f8c291;                  /* taken */
  --fr-warning-hover: #fa983a;            /* taken */
  --fr-warning-active: #bc936e;           /* derived */
  --fr-warning-on: #081842;               /* 10.8:1 on the fill */
  --fr-danger: #e55039;                   /* taken */
  --fr-danger-hover: #ca4632;             /* derived */
  --fr-danger-active: #ae3d2b;            /* derived */
  --fr-danger-on: #081842;                /* 4.5:1 on the fill */
  --fr-accent: #6a89cc;                   /* taken */
  --fr-accent-hover: #4a69bd;             /* taken */
  --fr-accent-active: #51689b;            /* derived */
  --fr-accent-on: #081842;                /* 5.0:1 on the fill */

  /* categorical — never status */
  --fr-chart-1: #e55039;                  /* Mandarin Red */
  --fr-chart-2: #f8c291;                  /* Melon Melody */
  --fr-chart-3: #e58e26;                  /* Carrot Orange */
  --fr-chart-4: #f6b93b;                  /* Squash Blossom */
  --fr-chart-5: #78e08f;                  /* Aurora Green */
  --fr-chart-6: #38ada9;                  /* Waterfall */
  --fr-chart-7: #60a3bc;                  /* Dupain */
  --fr-chart-8: #4a69bd;                  /* Azraq Blue */

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

Notes

Professional tips

  • Soft pastels grading evenly into deep sea blues. The smoothest light-to-dark progression of the set, which makes it the easiest to build a ramp from.
  • Darkest value: Dark Sapphire #0c2461. Lightest: Paradise Green #b8e994. 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 Léa Poisson (@goldfishlife 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
Dark Sapphire#0c2461Aa14.58AAAAa1.44FailLight only
Forest Blues#0a3d62Aa11.31AAAAa1.86FailLight only
Yuè Guāng Lán Blue#1e3799Aa10.19AAAAa2.06FailLight only
Jalapeno Red#b71540Aa6.57AAAa3.19AA LargeLight only
Good Samaritan#3c6382Aa6.37AAAa3.30AA LargeLight only
Azraq Blue#4a69bdAa5.19AAAa4.05AA LargeLight only
Tomato Red#eb2f06Aa4.25AA LargeAa4.94AADark only
Mandarin Red#e55039Aa3.79AA LargeAa5.54AADark only
Reef Encounter#079992Aa3.51AA LargeAa5.98AADark only
Livid#6a89ccAa3.46AA LargeAa6.06AADark only
Dupain#60a3bcAa2.81FailAa7.46AAADark only
Waterfall#38ada9Aa2.72FailAa7.72AAADark only
Carrot Orange#e58e26Aa2.55FailAa8.23AAADark only
Iceland Poppy#fa983aAa2.18FailAa9.62AAADark only
Spray#82ccddAa1.81FailAa11.63AAADark only
Squash Blossom#f6b93bAa1.76FailAa11.92AAADark only
Aurora Green#78e08fAa1.63FailAa12.86AAADark only
Melon Melody#f8c291Aa1.60FailAa13.12AAADark only
Flat Flesh#fad390Aa1.42FailAa14.79AAADark only
Paradise Green#b8e994Aa1.39FailAa15.12AAADark only