Interior Palette Creator
Create harmonious colour palettes for any room using the 60-30-10 rule. Choose room type, mood, and customise with an interactive colour picker
How this tool works
Choose a room type and mood, then pick your base inspiration color. The algorithm generates a complete 6-color interior scheme using the professional 60-30-10 ratio — walls, trim, accent, furniture, textiles, and decor. Every palette is designed to feel cohesive and balanced. Click any hex code to copy it. Runs entirely in your browser.
What the 60-30-10 Rule Actually Means
60-30-10 is a proportion guide, not a formula: 60% of the room reads as a dominant colour (walls, large rugs, the sofa if it dominates), 30% as a secondary tone (cabinetry, curtains, the second largest piece of furniture), and 10% as an accent (artwork, cushions, a feature chair, the thing your eye lands on). Get the proportions wrong and a room feels either flat or chaotic.
This palette generator picks six harmonious colours that already sit in those proportions; the dominant wall tone is the largest, the secondary trim and furniture sit in the middle band, and the accent is the saturated punch. Think of a Cotswold cottage living room: cream walls (60%), oatmeal sofa and natural-wood beams (30%), a single deep terracotta cushion and an oil painting (10%).
Picking a Mood That Matches the Room
Choose the room first, then the mood. A bedroom set to 'Romantic & Soft' shifts the hue cooler and drops saturation, giving you dusty rose and powder blue against a near-white wall. A kitchen set to 'Bold & Dramatic' returns the same base hue at higher saturation and lower value, producing forest greens and inky navies that work well against brass handles.
Eight moods are built in: Cosy & Warm, Modern & Clean, Earthy & Natural, Coastal & Airy, Bold & Dramatic, Minimalist, Romantic & Soft, and Industrial & Raw. Each adjusts hue shift, saturation and brightness rather than picking from a fixed swatch list, so the palette stays harmonious whatever base colour you start with. Try the [Colour Palette Generator](/colour-palette-generator) for non-room creative work.
Mood to Room Quick Match
| Room | Best Moods | Avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Living room | Cosy, Modern, Earthy | Industrial alone |
| Bedroom | Romantic, Coastal, Minimalist | Bold (sleep impact) |
| Kitchen | Bold, Modern, Industrial | Romantic (clashes with appliances) |
| Bathroom | Coastal, Minimalist, Modern | Earthy with low light |
| Nursery | Romantic, Coastal, Minimalist | Bold, Industrial |
| Home office | Modern, Minimalist, Industrial | Romantic (low focus) |
From Hex Codes to a Pot of Paint
Hex codes do not match paint codes one-for-one. A hex like #E8DCC4 might be Farrow & Ball Tallow, Dulux Soft Stone, or Little Greene Stone-Mid Warm depending on the lighting in your room. Take the generated hex to a paint shop and ask for a colour match; modern in-store spectrophotometers can read a printout or a phone screen and find the closest match in any range.
A few practical notes. Always paint a 1m x 1m test patch in the actual room and watch it for 24 hours; north-facing rooms shift colours cooler, south-facing shift them warmer. Estimate paint quantity with the [Paint Calculator](/paint-calculator) once you have settled. And for accessibility (especially text-on-wall murals or feature signage) run the chosen wall and accent through a [Contrast Checker](/contrast-checker) to make sure they meet WCAG AA at 4.5:1.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I lock a colour and regenerate the rest?
Yes. Click any swatch to set it as the wall colour, then regenerate; the other five colours rebuild around your fixed choice. This is useful when you have already bought a sofa or committed to a kitchen worktop and need the wall, trim and accents to harmonise around it.
What is the difference between trim and accent?
Trim is the supporting neutral applied to skirting, architrave, doors and ceiling, usually a near-white tone derived from the wall colour rather than pure brilliant white. Accent is the saturated punch that appears in cushions, artwork or a single feature chair, typically 5 to 10% of the visible surface area. Mixing the two up makes the room read as too busy or too washed out.
Should I use the same palette across the whole house?
Use a thread, not a clone. Pick one or two anchor neutrals (the dominant and trim) that run through hallways, landings and open-plan areas, then vary the accent and saturation room by room. This gives flow without making every room feel identical, and is exactly how interior designers handle a Victorian terrace where every room is visible from the next.
How does this differ from generic palette tools?
A general palette generator like Coolors picks pretty colours; an interior palette generator picks colours in the right proportions for a room, with saturation and brightness tuned to read well on actual paint and fabric rather than on a screen. The 60-30-10 weighting is built into the export, so the dominant colour gets the biggest swatch and the accent gets the smallest.
Will the screen colours look the same on the wall?
Almost never exactly. Monitors emit light; paint reflects it, so saturated colours always look duller on the wall than on screen. Drop your expectation by about 10 to 15% on saturation when you imagine the finished room, and always test a sample pot before committing to a full tin.
Related Tools
Paint Calculator
Calculate how much paint you need for any room. Enter dimensions, deduct doors and windows, choose paint type and number of coats. Get tin sizes and cost estimates.
Colour Contrast Checker
Check if your text and background colours meet WCAG accessibility standards (AA & AAA). Auto-fix suggestions included