Monochrome Color Palettes

About monochrome palettes

A monochrome palette uses a single hue at several levels of lightness, from a pale tint to a deep shade. Every palette here is a five-step scale of one color family, which makes it ready to use for backgrounds (lightest), borders and secondary elements (middle) and text or dark sections (darkest).

Monochrome designs are cohesive, calm and hard to get wrong, and they put the focus on layout and content. The challenge is hierarchy: without different hues, lightness must separate everything, so spread the steps widely and check that text pairs reach at least 4.5:1. A single accent from another hue is a common way to highlight actions.