Color is a key part of user experience. But picking a palette in Figma or from a color picker isn’t enough — you want to see how those colors actually behave in real-world UI elements like buttons, navbars, alerts, and backgrounds.

Here are 4 free tools that turn your color palette into real UI components, so you can design faster and smarter — without guessing.

🎨 1. Realtime Colors

What it does:

Lets you edit and preview your color palette live across headings, buttons, cards, and layouts.

Use it for:

  • Prototyping a design system
  • Creating accessible color pairs quickly

Pros:

  • Live editing of text, background, primary, secondary colors
  • Preview across actual web components
  • Export as Tailwind config or CSS variables

Cons:

  • Limited component variety (basic layout only)
  • No dark mode preview out of the box

🔗 Try Realtime Colors

🧰 2. PaletteMaker

What it does:

Generates harmonious color palettes and previews them on mock UI, branding, and illustrations.

Use it for:

  • Visualizing colors across web + print branding
  • Exporting to design tools like Procreate or CSS

Pros:

  • Real-world preview in branding, UI, illustration
  • Export formats: Procreate swatches, Adobe ASE, CSS
  • AI-enhanced palette generation from keywords

Cons:

  • Some advanced features are behind login
  • Design previews are fixed (can’t customize layout)

🔗 Explore PaletteMaker

🧭 3. Material Design Color Tool

What it does:

Google’s official tool for generating Material Design 3 color systems — with auto-generated light/dark themes.

Use it for:

  • Ensuring accessibility and consistency in design systems
  • Working with Material Design specs

Pros:

  • Auto-generates full palettes from a single seed color
  • Built-in contrast checking (WCAG AA/AAA)
  • Exports Material tokens for Android/web

Cons:

  • Focused on Material Design — not customizable for other UI systems
  • Doesn’t support arbitrary layout previews

🔗 Try the Material Tool

🎨 4. Happy Hues

What it does:

A curated set of color palettes applied to a real website layout — great for learning how colors interact in practice.

Use it for:

  • Color palette inspiration
  • Seeing how colors are used across entire page sections

Pros:

  • Carefully designed palettes by real designers
  • See how text, background, accent colors work together
  • Learn real-world layout color usage

Cons:

  • No option to upload or preview your custom colors
  • Palettes are fixed (read-only)

🔗 Browse Happy Hues

💡 Bonus Tip

Want to create your own palette and see it in real Tailwind components? You can also try:

  • 🛠 Tailwind Ink
  • 💻 chroma-js for programmatic palette generation
  • 🎨 Figma plugins like Prism, Color Style Generator, or Hue

🚀 Wrap-up

Choosing colors is easy — applying them meaningfully is the real challenge.

These tools bridge the gap between color theory and UI implementation, helping you build beautiful, accessible interfaces without reinventing the wheel.

Did I miss your favorite tool? Drop it in the comments! 👇