Custom Color Screen
Pick a color, or paste the hex value of one you already have, and the whole screen becomes it. Useful when the color matters - a brand value you need to see at size, a shade you are comparing between two monitors, or simply a background that is not one of the five obvious ones.
Press Esc at any point to come straight back to this page.
When the exact color matters
- Seeing a brand color at full size. A swatch in a document and a whole wall of the same value do not read the same way, and it is worth knowing that before it goes on a poster or a stand.
- Comparing two displays. Put the same hex on both, sit in front of them, and the difference in white point or saturation between the two panels stops being an argument and becomes something you can see.
- Making a backdrop in a color nothing else offers - a specific blue for a product shot, a near-black gray that is easier on the eyes than pure black, a soft warm tone behind a video call.
- Feeding a display or a camera a known value on purpose: checking that a mid gray really is neutral, that a deep color does not band, or that a projector matches what you sent it.
What the hex value means
A hex color is three pairs of digits - red, green and blue, each from 00 to ff - written after a hash. So #ff0000 is red at full and nothing else, #808080 is every channel at half, and #3b82f6 is the blue this page starts on. The three digit form is a shorthand where each digit is doubled, so #f80 and #ff8800 are the same color. Anything else typed here is rejected rather than guessed at.
Where your recent colors live
In this browser, in local storage, under this site's own key - nothing is sent anywhere, because this page has nowhere to send it. They are per browser and per device, so the list you build on a laptop will not appear on a phone, and clearing your browser data clears them.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I find the hex value of a color?
Brand guidelines list them, design tools show them in the color panel, and every operating system has a color picker with an eyedropper that will read a value off anything on your screen. If all you have is an RGB triple like 59 130 246, any converter turns it into a hex value, and the picker on this page accepts colors by dragging as well as by typing.
Will the color be accurate?
It will be exactly the value you asked for, sent to your display as sRGB. What the display then makes of it depends on the panel, its picture mode, its brightness and whether any night mode is warming everything at the time. That is why two screens showing the same hex often disagree, and why color-critical work uses a calibrated display rather than a browser tab.
Why is there a dimmer instead of a brightness control?
Because a web page can only make a color darker, never brighter. The dimmer lays black over the color at whatever opacity you choose. No browser API can reach your monitor's backlight or your phone's brightness, so anything claiming to raise your screen brightness from a web page is only ever showing you a lighter picture.
Can I save a color permanently?
The recent list keeps the last few automatically, but it is a short list and it rolls over. For a color you need again next month, bookmark nothing and write the hex down - six characters in your notes will outlive any browser storage, and pasting it back in here takes a second.