Color Mixer

What's the difference between RGB, LAB, LCH, and OKLCH mixing?

The color space changes how the math is done. RGB is the default and matches naive expectations , mixing red and green gives you olive (a muted neutral) the same way it would on a physical paint palette. LCH and OKLCH preserve perceived saturation, so the same red and green mix lands on a brighter gold-leaning result. LAB sits in between. HSL rotates around the hue circle and is best for analogous mixes. Switch the dropdown to compare; for paint-mixing content, RGB is the right default.

Can I mix more than two colors?

Yes. The mixer supports two to eight ingredients. Each ingredient gets its own weight (in "parts"), so you can mix two parts red, one part yellow, and one part blue to get a balanced brown. The math iterates: it mixes the first two colors based on their combined weight, then mixes the result with the third, and so on. For very even mixes set everything to one part. To make one ingredient dominate, raise its part count.

Why does red plus green make olive instead of yellow?

You're thinking of light mixing (additive RGB), where red light plus green light produces yellow. The mixer defaults to pigment mixing (subtractive), where red and green are complementary colors that cancel each other out toward a neutral brown or olive. That's the same result you'd get on a physical palette. To see the additive (light) version, switch the color space dropdown to LCH or OKLCH , those modes preserve saturation and produce a brighter result. For more on color theory and complementary pairs, see our color wheel and complementary colors guides.

How does ColorKit name the result?

Every mix gets matched against a database of more than 30,000 named colors using CIEDE2000 color difference , the same perceptual distance metric used by professional color tools and printing standards. CIEDE2000 measures how different two colors look to the human eye, not just how different their RGB numbers are, so the closest match is the name a person would actually use. Mix a muted red-green and you'll get back "Olive". Mix red, yellow, and a touch of brown and you'll see "Saddle Brown". Most other color mixers online only return a hex code; this is the only one that gives you a name.

Can I share a color mix?

Yes. The mixer keeps every state in the URL: the colors, the weights, and the color space. Click "Copy share link" and you'll get a URL like colorkit.co/color-mixer/?colors=ff0000-00ff00-0000ff&ratios=2,1,1&space=rgb that recreates the exact mix wherever it's pasted. Useful for design hand-offs, Slack messages, or saving a mix for later.

What two colors make brown, purple, or any other shade?

The mixer is built for experimenting forward (you have ingredients, you want to see the result), but if you're working backward from a target shade, ColorKit has step-by-step recipe guides for every primary and secondary color. See what colors make brown, purple, green, orange, red, yellow, and blue. Each guide includes 14 named shade variations with hex codes and exact ingredient ratios you can drop straight into this mixer.

Can I save a mix or build a palette around the result?

Yes. Click "Open in palette editor" and the mixer hands the result and all ingredients off to the color palette generator, where you can save, expand, or export it. From there you can also feed the result into the color shades generator to build a tonal ramp around it, or browse the palette library for ready-made color combinations.

What is a color mixer?

A color mixer is a tool that combines two or more colors and shows you the resulting blend. Designers, illustrators, and artists use mixers to predict what hex values will land where on the spectrum without having to mix paint physically or test in design software. ColorKit's mixer supports five color spaces (RGB, LAB, LCH, OKLCH, and HSL), accepts up to eight ingredients with weighted ratios, and uniquely names every result against a 30,000-entry color database so you can describe the output in words, not just numbers.

Color mixers are commonly used for:

• predicting paint mixing results before touching a brush
• finding the named hex code for a color you can describe but not articulate
• blending two brand colors to find a middle accent
• understanding how complementary pairs neutralize toward gray or brown
• generating recipe diagrams for how-to and educational content