Pastel Color Picker
Pick a soft pastel color like mint, blush or baby blue and copy any shade of it as HEX, RGB or HSL.
Click any shade to select it, or use Copy HEX for the selected color.
Picking a pastel, step by step
- Pick a pastel family: blush, peach, mint, baby blue, lilac and more, each as a soft ramp.
- Click a step to choose the exact softness you want, from near-white to a deeper pastel.
- Copy the HEX, with RGB and HSL alongside, for your design or stylesheet.
- Want to soften your own color? Open the HSL picker and raise lightness while lowering saturation.
Popular pastel colors and their HEX codes
Pastels are named more by feel than by rule, but a handful show up again and again. Here are the most common ones with a representative HEX:
What makes a color a pastel?
A pastel is any hue with plenty of white mixed in, which lifts its lightness and drops its saturation until it reads as soft and airy. In HSL terms that usually means a lightness up around 85 to 95 percent and a gentle saturation, so the hue is still recognisable but never shouts. That single recipe is what ties blush, mint and baby blue together despite their different hues.
How to turn any color into a pastel
- Open the color in the HSL picker, since lightness and saturation each get their own slider.
- Push lightness up toward 90 percent to flood the color with white.
- Ease saturation down until the hue softens but is still clearly itself.
- Copy the result, or pull a ready-made soft set straight from a photo with Palette From Image.
Why pastels read as calm and modern
There is a reason wellness apps, baby brands and a lot of recent web design lean pastel: low saturation is simply easier on the eye than bright color. Pastels lower the visual volume, so a layout feels gentle and unhurried rather than demanding. Used as a base with one slightly deeper accent, they look current without trying too hard.
Designs that suit a pastel palette
- Wellness, beauty and baby brands that want a soft, caring feel.
- Spring and Easter themes, and friendly illustration.
- Calm UI backgrounds that keep contrast comfortable for the eye.
- Gentle gradients built in the CSS Gradient tool.
Add white: in HSL, raise the lightness and lower the saturation until the hue turns soft and pale.
A tint is any color plus white. A pastel is a tint taken far enough that the color reads as soft and light overall.
Rarely on a white background, since the contrast is too low to read. Use pastels for backgrounds and pair text with a darker color.
Soft tones like blush #FFD1DC, mint #BDFCC9 and baby blue #BFEFFF are classic pastels.