Using gray well
Charcoal instead of pure black softens text on white; slate grays cool an interface toward professional, while greige (gray-beige) warms it toward cozy. The classic system: two grays for text, two for borders/backgrounds, one accent color.
Need variations of a specific shade? Copy its hex into the palette generator for harmonies, or the contrast checker to verify text passes WCAG on top of it.
Frequently asked questions
What are the most popular shades of gray?
The classics are Black, Onyx, Charcoal, Gunmetal, Slate Gray, Dim Gray — the named swatches at the top of this page. Click any of them to copy the hex code.
What do the numbered shades (100–1000) mean?
They're a generated lightness scale of one representative hue, in the naming style design systems like Tailwind and Material use — low numbers dark, high numbers light. Use them as a ready-made UI ramp.
How do I get RGB or HSL instead of hex?
Copy the hex here, then paste it into our HEX to RGB converter — it returns RGB and HSL together, and the color picker gives sliders for fine-tuning.