Complementary Colour Palette Generator
Pick a base colour and get its opposite on the wheel, plus supporting tones. The highest-contrast pairing colour theory offers.
Describe the edit — the AI assistant does it on the canvas.
2 free credits · No signup · ~10 seconds
What complementary actually means
Opposite hues, maximum contrast
A complementary pair sits 180 degrees apart on the colour wheel. That is the largest hue difference available, which is why the combination feels energetic and why it is the standard choice when something has to stand out rather than blend in.
Use one as the accent, not fifty-fifty
Equal amounts of two opposite colours fight each other and the eye finds nowhere to rest. The convention is roughly ten to twenty percent accent against a dominant base. That is why a call-to-action button works in the complement and a whole page in it does not.
Where the palette comes from
The base is converted to HSL, the hue is rotated by 180 degrees, and supporting tones are derived by adjusting lightness and saturation around both. Working in HSL rather than RGB is what keeps the results perceptually sensible instead of arithmetically correct but ugly.
Vibrating edges
Two fully saturated complements placed directly against each other appear to shimmer, because the eye cannot focus both at once. Red on green is the classic offender. Desaturating one side or separating them with a neutral fixes it.
Contrast in hue is not contrast in brightness
Complementary colours can have almost identical luminance, which means text in one on a background of the other can fail accessibility checks despite looking bold. Always check the contrast ratio rather than trusting the hue difference.
How to complementary colour palette generator
Pick your base colour
Set the colour picker to your brand or starting colour. There is nothing to upload.
Read the palette
The complement and its supporting tones appear immediately, with the hex code under each swatch.
Copy what you need
Click any swatch to copy its hex, or copy all of them at once.
Complementary Colour Palette Generator — in the editor
The real editor, start to finish — no signup needed to try it yourself.
2 free credits · No signup · ~10 seconds
Where complementary pairs work
Call-to-action buttons
Make a button unmissable by putting it in the complement of the page colour.
Landing page accents
Pick a highlight colour that pulls the eye without clashing with the brand.
Charts and data
Separate two opposing series so they are distinguishable at a glance.
Brand exploration
Test how a brand colour behaves against its natural opposite.
Used by designers, indie devs & students at
What people use it for
The jobs the editor was built around — and what it does differently on each one.
Colourways you can revisit
Every edit is a layer, not a bake. When the brand shifts, reopen the file and change the colour rather than rebuilding the variant from the original.
Cutouts with awkward edges
AI background removal that keeps hair, foliage and soft shadows instead of stamping a hard outline around them. The output is a transparent PNG, ready to place.
No export, edit, re-import loop
The Framer plugin runs on the canvas you are already working in, so a recolour or a cutout does not mean a round trip through a second application.
Ten options in the time one used to take
Recolour once and step through the alternatives, so a client review can look at the whole range instead of the one version there was time to make.
Brand colours matched exactly
Pick a colour straight off an existing asset and get the hex, rather than eyeballing it against a screenshot and hoping it is close enough.
Free to preview, priced per export
Previewing is unlimited and costs nothing. A credit is spent only when you download a full-resolution file, so exploring an idea is never the expensive part.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Tools
Guides worth reading
How to Get Your Website Ready for Google WebMCP
A step-by-step guide to exposing WebMCP tools on your site — the imperative and declarative APIs, how to test them, and the real security downsides.
The Best Free Design Tools for Indie Developers
A working set of free design tools for developers shipping solo — UI, icons, fonts, colour, illustration and asset prep — with the real free-tier limits.
How to Batch Recolor Images (Without Opening Each One)
Three honest ways to recolor a whole folder at once: a browser batch tool, a Photoshop action, and ImageMagick — plus which operations survive batching.
Generate a complementary palette
Pick a base colour and copy the hex codes.