What is a good color palette for charts?

A good chart palette is short and mostly neutral: one accent for emphasis, a small set of clearly different category colors, a light-to-dark scale for ordered numbers, and a couple of status colors for good and bad. Every color should stay readable on your background and remain distinct for colorblind viewers.

How many colors should a chart use?

Six to eight category colors is the practical ceiling; past that, colors get hard to tell apart. If you have more categories, group the smaller ones into an Other bucket or use one highlight color against gray.

How do I make a colorblind-safe palette?

Never rely on hue alone. Give colors different lightness as well as different hue, avoid red and green as the only difference, prefer blue and orange for good and bad, and always add a label, icon, or line style so meaning survives in grayscale. This tool checks every palette against red-green and blue-yellow colorblindness and fixes clashes automatically.

Can I use this palette in Excel and Power BI?

Yes. You can download a real Office theme file (.thmx) that sets Excel's and PowerPoint's chart colors, a Power BI theme JSON, or CSS variables and a JSON file for the web and other tools.

Data-Viz Color Studio: Generate a Chart Color Palette

1

Start with your color

You only need one color to begin. Add as many sources as you like — a hex code, a logo image, your website, a slide deck — and we'll pull the colors together. Then click the ones that are really "you".

Don't have a brand color? Pick anything you like — a confident blue or warm orange both work well.

Drag a logo or screenshot here, or choose a file.

We read the colors right here in your browser — nothing is uploaded.

We fetch the page and read its brand colors and logo. Big sites work best.

Drop a .pptx here, or choose a file.

We read the deck's theme colors in your browser — nothing is uploaded.

Your colors (first one is your main / accent):

2

Set the feel

Sensible defaults are already chosen from your color. Nudge these if you want.

How many chart colors? 6

Six to eight is the sweet spot. More than that gets hard to read.

How should it feel? Balanced

Left = calm & corporate. Right = bright & playful.

Background

Where will your charts live?

3

Your color system

4

How to use your colors

The part most tools skip: exactly which of your colors to use in which situation — in charts and across your spreadsheet — and how to keep a color meaning the same thing everywhere. Every example uses your palette.

5

Take it with you

A one-page guide with your colors and how to use them — plus ready-to-import theme files.

📄 Takeaway guide

Your palette + plain instructions on one page. Save it as a PDF from the print dialog.

📊 PowerPoint

The same guide as an editable, on-brand slide deck (also demonstrates the theme).

🟩 Excel / Office theme

A real theme file. In Excel: Page Layout → Themes → Browse for Themes.

🟨 Power BI theme

Import in Power BI: View → Themes → Browse for themes.

🌐 Web / code

CSS variables and a JSON file, or copy the raw hex list.

Want dashboards that already look like this?

Browse Excel templates built on palettes like yours, or have Josh design your report. New tips most weeks — join the newsletter.

Questions

Do I need to know color theory?

No. Pick a color you like and read the plain-language notes on each swatch. If you're curious, every section has an optional "why this works" you can expand.

Is anything uploaded to a server?

Images and PowerPoint files are read entirely in your browser — they never leave your device. Only the "Website" option fetches a page for you (that has to happen on a server to work around browser security), and it returns just colors and a couple of image links.

Why does it care about colorblindness?

About 1 in 12 men has some red-green color blindness. If your chart colors only differ by hue, those readers can't tell your series apart. This tool checks every palette and adjusts colors so they stay distinct — but you should still add labels or icons, never color alone.

Which export do I want?

Working in Excel or PowerPoint? Grab the .thmx theme. Power BI? The .json theme. Building on the web or handing colors to a developer? CSS or JSON. Just want to keep it? The PDF/PowerPoint takeaway. Read more in the color palette guide.