Primary Color Picker
Pick a primary color, red, yellow or 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.
How to use the Primary Color Picker
- Choose a primary: red, yellow or blue, each shown as a full ramp from light to dark.
- Click a shade to select it and preview the exact color.
- Copy the HEX, with RGB and HSL shown alongside, and paste it into your design.
- Need a specific one? Jump to the red, yellow or blue color picker for fine control.
Red, yellow and blue color picker
Each of the three primary colors is laid out as its own scale, so you can grab a pale tint or a deep shade of the same base. The pure versions sit in the middle of each ramp:
What are the primary colors?
Primary colors are the base colors that cannot be mixed from any others, yet combine to make every other color. In the traditional RYB model used in art and paint, those bases are red, yellow and blue. Mix two of them and you get a secondary color; mix a primary with a neighbouring secondary and you get a tertiary color.
RYB primaries vs RGB primaries
The catch most people miss is that screens do not use red, yellow and blue. A monitor mixes light, not paint, so its primaries are red, green and blue, which is why bright color on screen and on paper never quite line up.
Why red, yellow and blue still rule the classroom
Even though designers work in RGB on screen, RYB is far from outdated. It maps to how physical pigment actually behaves, so for painting, mixing inks and teaching color theory it is still the clearer model. Reaching for RYB to plan a palette and RGB to ship it is a sensible split.
Where primary colors get used
- Bold, high-contrast branding, the way LEGO and primary-school design lean on pure red, yellow and blue.
- Teaching color mixing, since every other hue can be demonstrated from these three.
- Building a palette from scratch, then softening the primaries into tints and shades.
- Children’s products and signage, where instantly recognisable color matters more than subtlety.
In the traditional RYB model used for art, yes: red, yellow and blue. Screens use a different set, red, green and blue, as their primaries.
They are the starting points of the model, so no combination of other colors produces them.
Red is #FF0000, yellow is #FFFF00 and blue is #0000FF. Each sits in the middle of its ramp in the picker above.
No. RGB primaries are red, green and blue, used for light on screens. Red, yellow and blue are the paint-based RYB primaries.