Color Picker

What the link does

The color is written into the address after the # — /color#ff8800, for instance. That part of an address is called the fragment, and browsers never send it to a server: it exists only in your window. Sharing it costs nothing and reopens the exact shade, and because it never reaches a server, no page is created for it and nothing about your choice is recorded anywhere.

20 colors also have ordinary pages of their own, at addresses like /color/ff0000. Most are the values this site uses in its own tools, plus four common named colors, and they exist so that a search for a common color leads somewhere real. Every other shade lives in the fragment. Each of those pages gives the RGB and HSL values and the contrast against black and white.

Using it

1. 1

   Pick a color with the swatch, or type a HEX value straight into the box.

2. 2

   Go full screen to judge it without the page around it — useful for backdrops, lighting and checking a shade against a wall or a fabric.

3. 3

   Copy the link if you want to send it to someone, or keep the tab open: the address updates as you pick.

What it is and is not

It fills the screen with one sRGB color and tells you its value. It is not a color-management tool: what you see depends on your display and its settings, so the same HEX will look warmer on one screen than another. Nothing here calibrates or profiles anything.

For the same color written three ways, use the Color Converter; for its closest standard name, the Color Name Finder. For plain white at full screen, there is a White Screen with its own page.