Comprehensive list of color palettes in R

The goal of this repository is to have a one stop destination for anyone looking for a color palette to use in r. If you would like to help/contribute please feel free post an issue, PR or send a email to emilhhvitfeldt@gmail.com.

Interactive R Color Palette Pickers:

• https://emilhvitfeldt.github.io/r-color-palettes/
• https://r-graph-gallery.com/color-palette-finder

Further down the page is all the palettes available in the R ecosystem ordered alphabetically by package name. A list of palettes ordered by type can be found here Type sorted palettes to shorten the length of this page.

Paletteer package

I have collected all the palettes displayed here in a single package using a unified framework. Developmental version can be found here.

You can install the released version of paletteer from CRAN with:

install.packages("paletteer")

If you want the development version instead then install directly from GitHub:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("EmilHvitfeldt/paletteer")

Table of Contents

• Main page
• Blogposts and other resources
• Generative packages
• Honorable mentions
• Palettes sorted by Package (alphabetically)
  • Non Novelty Palettes
  • Sequential color palettes
  • Diverging color palettes
  • Qualitative color palettes
  • Canva palettes
  • Palettetown palettes
• News

Blogposts and other resources

Here is a collection of material on the use and creation of color palettes in r.

• Creating corporate colour palettes for ggplot2
• Make your own color palettes with paletti
• How to create a color palette in R with more than 15 colors with ggplot2
• Generating a Custom Color Palette Function in R
• How to build a color palette from any image with R and k-means algo
• Why choice of colour is important beyond aesthtic considerations and how the quality of a palette might be assesed
• Viz palette: colors in action

Color manipulation packages

• Extract palettes from images and text
• Fast Vectorised Colour Conversion and Comparison
• How to Read, Inspect, and Manipulate Color Swatch Files
• Simple colour manipulation in R

Generative packages

The purpose of this project is to showcase the palettes already available in R (packages). However sometimes you have to resort to make one yourself. When that is the case the following packages aides in creating.

• AndreaCirilloAC/paletter
• jolars/qualpalr
• ronammar/randomcoloR
• johnbaums/hues
• ColorPalette
• oaColors
• earthtones
• leeper/colourlovers

When creating color palettes certain website have also provided valuable

• paletton
• Data color picker
• i want hue
• Viz Palette

Perception of color palettes

Selecting a color palette requires a number of different considerations. Within these considerations is

• the palette retains its integrity when printed in black and white
• people with colorblindness are able to understand it

In the following I have outlined a couple of those problems

Printing in black and white

While most of the palettes presented here contains a wide variety of colors. While that is compelling, you need to remember that your product might be printed in black and white one day, and you should pick a palette that allows for interpretation if that is the case.

First example is the rainbow palette from the grDevices package with its colorful display. However as we see here would it be horrible if used for black and white printing since different colors are mapped to the same shade of grey.

source("palette_plotter.R")

pal_data <- list(
  Normal = rainbow(32),
  Desaturated = colorspace::desaturate(rainbow(32))
)

make_plot(pal_data, "readme-1")

Standard rainbow palette

A related problem happens with the standard color palette used in ggplot2 since that color is picked to have constant chroma and luminance thus yielding the same shade of grey when desaturated. (This palette is no longer the default for continuous variables in ggplot2 after version 3.0.0)

pal_data <- list(
  Normal = scales::hue_pal()(256),
  Desaturated = colorspace::desaturate(scales::hue_pal()(256))
)

make_plot(pal_data, "readme-2")

Standard color palette for ggplot2

One of the continuous palette that satisfy this criteria is the well known viridis palettes.

pal_data <- list(
  Normal = viridis::inferno(256),
  Desaturated = colorspace::desaturate(viridis::inferno(256))
)

make_plot(pal_data, "readme-3")

inferno palette from viridis

To test if the palette you want to use will be distorted when in black and white, use the colorspace::desaturate() to desaturate it.

Color blindness

Another thing you have to take into consideration when picking a palette is how it would be viewed by a person who is color blind. There are several approaches to ensuring that a colorblind person can interpret your figures. A very good summary of what you can do is given by Masataka Okabe and Kei Ito in their document “Color Universal Design (CUD) - How to make figures and presentations that are friendly to Colorblind people”. Beyond using shapes, linetypes and size for information coding, which is easily done using the ggplot2 aesthetics, they recommend:

Using unambiguous palettes

The easiest way to make color coding accessible to everyone, is using a palette, that is unambiguous to people with various types of color blindness. There are a few available:

• Masataka Okabe and Kei Ito have developed such a barrier free palette, and you can use it in R with the colorblind_pal() of the ggthemes package (also see colorblind_pal palette among the ggthemes palettes in the alphabetical list below) or by using the encoding provided by the Cookbook for R.
• Some of the palettes developed by Cynthia Brewer for the ColorBrewer are colorblind safe, you can find them through the palette chooser website’s button “colorblind safe”. In R, you can use the brewer palettes through ggplot2’s scale_colour_brewer() et al. or through the separate package RColorBrewer.

Simulating effects of color blindness on used palettes

To visualize the effect of color blindness on our palettes we will turn to two packages. The dichromat package can simulate color blindness on individual color and then also entire palettes like so in this rainbow palette:

pal_data <- list(
  Normal = rainbow(256),
  Deuteranopia = dichromat::dichromat(rainbow(256), type = "deutan"),
  Protanopia = dichromat::dichromat(rainbow(256), type = "protan"),
  Tritanopia = dichromat::dichromat(rainbow(256), type = "tritan")
)

make_plot(pal_data, "readme-4")

The effect of color blindness on the rainbow palette

Another package that can provide helpful is the amazing colorblindr package that is able to simulate color blindness to ggplot objects them self.

Honorable mentions

Due to the somehow vague notion of “color palette” have I decided to exclude certain kinds of packages from the main gallery. Generative package have been discussed earlier.

cpt-city

The amazing cpt-city is a wonderful project of creating an archive of color palettes to be used in cartography, technical illustration and design. Due to the immense size (7140) I have decided to refer to it instead of re-illustration them in this repository. If any of the palettes found here are for your liking they can be accessed in R using the following package:

# CRAN version
install.packages("cptcity")

sport colors

Many of the palettes in sports related palettes have a very limited number of colors (often only 2 colors). This leads to quite low usability outside of the special area of sports analytic.

• colorr Color palettes for EPL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and NFL teams.

• beanumber/teamcolors An R package providing color palettes for pro sports teams.

Canva palettes

The ggthemes package include the 150 four-color palettes from the canva.com. Doe to the size and limited number of colors in the palettes these palettes will be featured on their own page and only once.

• Canva colors

Palettes sorted by Package (alphabetically)

ButterflyColors

# Developmental version
pak::pak("junqueiragaabi/ButterflyColors")

DresdenColor

# Developmental version
pak::pak("katiesaund/DresdenColor")

IslamicArt

# Developmental version
pak::pak("lambdamoses/IslamicArt")

LaCroixColoR

# Developmental version
pak::pak("johannesbjork/LaCroixColoR")

Manu

# Developmental version
pak::pak("G-Thomson/Manu")

MapPalettes

# Developmental version
pak::pak("disarm-platform/MapPalettes")

MetBrewer

# Developmental version
pak::pak("BlakeRMills/MetBrewer")

# CRAN version
install.packages("MetBrewer")

MexBrewer

# Developmental version
pak::pak("paezha/MexBrewer")

MoMAColors

# Developmental version
pak::pak("BlakeRMills/MoMAColors")

NatParksPalettes

# Developmental version
pak::pak("kevinsblake/NatParksPalettes")

# CRAN version
install.packages("NatParksPalettes")

NineteenEightyR

# Developmental version
pak::pak("m-clark/NineteenEightyR")

PNWColors

# Developmental version
pak::pak("jakelawlor/PNWColors")

Polychrome

# CRAN version
install.packages("Polychrome")

PrettyCols

# Developmental version
pak::pak("nrennie/PrettyCols")

# CRAN version
install.packages("PrettyCols")

RColorBrewer

# CRAN version
install.packages("RColorBrewer")

RSkittleBrewer

# Developmental version
pak::pak("alyssafrazee/RSkittleBrewer")

Rdune

# Developmental version
pak::pak("nvietto/Rdune")

# CRAN version
install.packages("Rdune")

Redmonder

# Developmental version
pak::pak("pmdci/redmonder")

# CRAN version
install.packages("Redmonder")

amerika

# Developmental version
pak::pak("pdwaggoner/amerika")

# CRAN version
install.packages("amerika")

awtools

# Developmental version
pak::pak("awhstin/awtools")

basetheme

# Developmental version
pak::pak("karoliskoncevicius/basetheme")

# CRAN version
install.packages("basetheme")

beyonce

# Developmental version
pak::pak("dill/beyonce")

blueycolors

# Developmental version
pak::pak("ekholme/blueycolors")

calecopal

# Developmental version
pak::pak("an-bui/calecopal")

colRoz

# Developmental version
pak::pak("jacintak/colRoz")

colorBlindness

# CRAN version
install.packages("colorBlindness")

colorblindr

# Developmental version
pak::pak("clauswilke/colorblindr")

dichromat

# CRAN version
install.packages("dichromat")

dutchmasters

# Developmental version
pak::pak("EdwinTh/dutchmasters")

feathers

# Developmental version
pak::pak("shandiya/feathers")

fishualize

# Developmental version
pak::pak("nschiett/fishualize")

# CRAN version
install.packages("fishualize")

futurevisions

# Developmental version
pak::pak("JoeyStanley/futurevisions")

ggpomological

# Developmental version
pak::pak("gadenbuie/ggpomological")

ggprism

# Developmental version
pak::pak("csdaw/ggprism")

# CRAN version
install.packages("ggprism")

ggsci

# Developmental version
pak::pak("nanxstats/ggsci")

# CRAN version
install.packages("ggsci")

ggthemes

# Developmental version
pak::pak("jrnold/ggthemes")

# CRAN version
install.packages("ggthemes")

ggthemr

# Developmental version
pak::pak("Mikata-Project/ggthemr")

ghibli

# Developmental version
pak::pak("ewenme/ghibli")

# CRAN version
install.packages("ghibli")

grDevices

# CRAN version
install.packages("grDevices")

impressionist.colors

# CRAN version
install.packages("impressionist.colors")

jcolors

# Developmental version
pak::pak("jaredhuling/jcolors")

khroma

# Developmental version
pak::pak("tesselle/khroma")

# CRAN version
install.packages("khroma")

lisa

# Developmental version
pak::pak("tylerlittlefield/lisa")

# CRAN version
install.packages("lisa")

ltc

# Developmental version
pak::pak("loukesio/ltc-color-palettes")

miscpalettes

# Developmental version
pak::pak("EmilHvitfeldt/miscpalettes")

musculusColors

# Developmental version
pak::pak("dawnbarlow/musculusColors")

nationalparkcolors

# Developmental version
pak::pak("katiejolly/nationalparkcolors")

nbapalettes

# Developmental version
pak::pak("murrayjw/nbapalettes")

# CRAN version
install.packages("nbapalettes")

nord

# Developmental version
pak::pak("jkaupp/nord")

# CRAN version
install.packages("nord")

ochRe

# Developmental version
pak::pak("hollylkirk/ochRe")

palettesForR

# Developmental version
pak::pak("frareb/palettesForR")

# CRAN version
install.packages("palettesForR")

pals

# Developmental version
pak::pak("kwstat/pals")

# CRAN version
install.packages("pals")

peRReo

# Developmental version
pak::pak("jbgb13/peRReo")

poisonfrogs

# Developmental version
pak::pak("laurenoconnelllab/poisonfrogs")

# CRAN version
install.packages("poisonfrogs")

rcartocolor

# Developmental version
pak::pak("Nowosad/rcartocolor")

# CRAN version
install.packages("rcartocolor")

rockthemes

# Developmental version
pak::pak("johnmackintosh/rockthemes")

rtist

# Developmental version
pak::pak("tomasokal/rtist")

# CRAN version
install.packages("rtist")

severance

# Developmental version
pak::pak("ivelasq/severance")

soilpalettes

# Developmental version
pak::pak("kaizadp/soilpalettes")

suffrager

# Developmental version
pak::pak("alburezg/suffrager")

tayloRswift

# Developmental version
pak::pak("asteves/tayloRswift")

tidyquant

# Developmental version
pak::pak("business-science/tidyquant")

# CRAN version
install.packages("tidyquant")

trekcolors

# Developmental version
pak::pak("leonawicz/trekcolors")

# CRAN version
install.packages("trekcolors")

tvthemes

# Developmental version
pak::pak("Ryo-N7/tvthemes")

# CRAN version
install.packages("tvthemes")

unikn

# Developmental version
pak::pak("hneth/unikn")

# CRAN version
install.packages("unikn")

vangogh

# Developmental version
pak::pak("cherylisabella/vangogh")

# CRAN version
install.packages("vangogh")

vapeplot

# Developmental version
pak::pak("seasmith/vapeplot")

vapoRwave

# Developmental version
pak::pak("moldach/vapoRwave")

waRhol

# Developmental version
pak::pak("alexskeels/waRhol")

werpals

# Developmental version
pak::pak("sciencificity/werpals")

wesanderson

# Developmental version
pak::pak("karthik/wesanderson")

# CRAN version
install.packages("wesanderson")

yarrr

# Developmental version
pak::pak("ndphillips/yarrr")

# CRAN version
install.packages("yarrr")