A Most Excellent

Color Picker

Created for your enjoyment by Brandon Mathis
Source © 2025 Brandon Mathis |

HSL, HWB & HSV: Hue

In HSL, HWB, and HSV we can describe and manipulate colors in a very natural way. The hue property ranges from 0 to 360 letting us select our base color. For example, red shows up at 0, yellow at 60, and orange naturally resides between them at 30 degrees.

With the HSL model, a pure red is at hsl(0 100% 50%). In HWB however, a pure red is hwb(0 0% 0%), and in HSV it's hsv(0 100% 100%). Read on to learn the differences between these three models.

HSL: Saturation & Luminosity

Saturation is a percentage that describes the amount of hue in our color. Starting with our pure red at hsl(0 100% 50%), as we reduce the saturation our color will become more and more gray. At 0% saturation the hue will not be evident in the color at all, leaving us with a grayscale spectrum. At 100% we will have the full brilliance of the hue available to our color mix.

Luminosity is a percentage which allows us to tweak the amount of white or black added to our color mix. Again, given our pure red hsl(0 100% 50%), our luminosity is at 50%. As we reduce the luminosity our color darkens until it becomes black at 0%. As you would expect, when we increase the luminosity our red becomes pink and eventually white at 100% luminosity.

HWB: Whiteness & Blackness

Whiteness, as you'd expect, lightens a color as you increase it from 0% to 100%. And as it would follow Blackness adds black to your color. A color with 0% blackness and 100% whiteness will always be white. As you increase the blackness, the color will become more gray. Let's look at our pure red again. In HWB it is hwb(0 0% 0%). If we want to make it more pink, we need to add whiteness. If we want to desaturate it a bit we can add some blackness too, which will make it appear more of a smokey pink.

HSV: Saturation & Value

HSV (also called HSB for Brightness) shares the same hue wheel as HSL and HWB. However, saturation and value work differently. In HSV, our pure red is hsv(0 100% 100%). Saturation controls color intensity just like in HSL, but value controls brightness from black (0%) to the pure hue (100%). Unlike HSL's luminosity, HSV's value never adds white to your color—it only controls how bright or dark it appears.

Where HWB lets you independently add whiteness and blackness to a pure hue, HSV takes a different approach. You can desaturate toward gray (like HSL) or darken toward black with value, but there's no direct way to lighten toward white. This makes HSV particularly intuitive for artists familiar with traditional color mixing, where you start with a pure pigment and either dilute it or darken it.

OKLCH: The New Color Kid on the Block

OKLCH is the newest color model to arrive in browsers, and it's a game-changer. Unlike HSL/HSV/HWB that share the same hue wheel, OKLCH uses a completely different hue system based on human perception. Where HSL's yellow sits at 60°, OKLCH puts it around 110°. This isn't a bug—it's a feature! OKLCH hues actually match how our eyes perceive color relationships.

The real magic of OKLCH is wide gamut support. While HSL and friends are limited to sRGB colors (the web's traditional color space), OKLCH can describe vibrant colors that exist in P3 and beyond—think the electric blues and neon greens you see on modern displays. When you pick an out-of-gamut color, browsers automatically fall back to the closest sRGB or P3 equivalent, so your colors work everywhere.

You'll notice gaps in the OKLCH sliders—these aren't broken! They represent the limits of what displays can actually show. Those gaps are "gamut boundaries" where certain combinations of lightness, chroma, and hue simply don't exist in the real world. It's like trying to mix a color that's simultaneously super bright and super saturated—physics just won't allow it.

Pro tip: OKLCH can be tricky to navigate directly. Try picking a color in HSL or HWB first, then switch to OKLCH and crank up the chroma to push it into those vibrant P3 territories. It's like having a turbo button for your colors!

Which to use?

Here's the thing: OKLCH is secretly a superpower for design systems. Because it uses perceptual lightness, you can shift hues while keeping the same visual brightness—something that's impossible with HSL. Imagine creating an entire palette by picking one color and just rotating the hue. With OKLCH, all those colors will feel equally vivid and balanced. With HSL? Some will look washed out while others pop.

That said, HSL and HWB are still fantastic for quick color picking—they're intuitive and you already know them. Think of it this way: use HSL or HWB to find your color, then switch to OKLCH to perfect it. Want that blue to really sing on a modern display? OKLCH. Need a whole rainbow of colors that work together? OKLCH. Just picking a quick accent color? HSL or HWB will do you just fine.

WAIT A MINUTE, Eight Character Hex Colors???

Yea pretty neat huh? It turns out hex colors support alpha. You can even have four character hex colors. Just like #F3A is shorthand for #FF33AA so the color #F3A0 is a transparent pink which expands to #FF33AA00.