Click a card for details and origin
About 240 colors — Japan's traditional colors and the CSS named colors — in one place. Beyond names and codes, each entry carries the origin of its name, its meaning, and suggested pairings. Search, pick, and copy.
A color dictionary collects not just color names and codes (HEX/RGB/HSL) but also the origin of each name and the meaning and impression a color carries. Knowing why a color is named the way it is lets you explain your palette in words — and a palette you can explain is far more persuasive.
This tool lets you look up, on a single screen, both Japan's 100 traditional colors with over a thousand years of history and the ~140 CSS named colors you can use directly on the web. Filter by hue or category, and click any color to see its origin, meaning, suggested pairings and contrast ratio.
Japanese traditional colors were named after plant and mineral dyes, or after scenes from nature and daily life. Akane-iro is the red dyed from madder root; asagi-iro is the pale blue-green of young scallion leaves; edo-murasaki is the bluish purple favored in old Edo. To learn a name is to learn the culture the color carries.
CSS defines 147 color keywords you can write instead of a HEX value, such as crimson or teal (W3C specification). Writing color: crimson; improves readability. These names have origins too: crimson comes from a deep-red dye made from the kermes insect, and rebeccapurple was added in 2014 in memory of a member of the CSS community. This tool merges spelling variants such as gray/grey into one entry.
Yes — completely free, no sign-up. The codes shown can be used freely for commercial or personal projects.
On each detail view you can copy HEX, RGB and HSL with one click. From the grid cards you can quickly copy the HEX.
Yes. Search by kanji name, kana, romaji, English name or HEX, and filter by hue and category.
Each detail view shows the contrast ratio against white and black backgrounds with the WCAG grade (AA / AAA).
100 Japanese traditional colors and about 140 CSS named colors (spelling variants such as gray/grey merged into one). More to come.