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Color Tools & Resources
- Adobe Color CCIncludes a color wheel for generating color schemes; can choose from different types of schemes.
- PalettonA designer tool for creating color combinations that work together well.
- ColorBrewerTool for developing color palettes for data visualizations.
- Color Blindness SimulatorTest your visualization to ensure it is accessible to people with color blindness.
How is color used in data visualization?
Color is one of many "marks" used in data visualization to encode data to something visual. Others include tick marks on an axis, labels, size, and position. You will use different color schemes, scales, and shades to communicate about the dataset.
Color Scales for Data Visualizations
Sequential / Continuous Color Scale
Lighter color usually means less, while a darker color means more. Common in heat maps.
Categorical Color Scale
Distinct, unique colors for each category. Common in line, bar, and pie charts.
Diverging Color Scale
Two distinct colors on opposite ends of a spectrum. Common in heat maps, scatter plots, and networks.
All color scale graphics created by Kayla Abner and are licensed under a CC-BY-SA 2.0 license.