Hey Chris! Great question, so there 3 main things to look at while choosing colors:

1 min readApr 29, 2022

1. How aesthetically pleasing it is,

2. How accessible the colour is, meaning:

a. Is the colour visible across different kinds of screens

b. Is it visible across different lighting conditions

3. Is it contrasting enough so that the text is legible even in small fonts.

There's no formula to getting aesthetically pleasing colours, it is quite subjective. But we can definitely acheive accessible colours:

Say, I have a red palette of 10 colours going from light red to dark red.

I would use shade 6 or 7 for light mode and flip-flop it with shade 3 or 4 for dark mode. This helps maintain contrast.

In a few cases, depending on the palette, we can also use shade 5 and keep it as is across both light and dark mode.

I use this tool to check contrast and accessibility of my colours (its free):

Hope that answers your question :)

Written by Atharva Kulkarni