Limited Palette Generator
Explore three classic, well-documented limited palettes used by professional painters, with swatches and guidance on what each one can (and can't) mix.
Choose a Limited Palette
What You Can Mix
Limitations
How to Use This Tool
Choose one of three classic limited palettes from the dropdown to see its swatches, the traditional pigment names, and a plain-language explanation of what that palette can and cannot mix.
Why Paint with a Limited Palette?
Working with a small, deliberately restricted set of colours is a long-standing technique used by many professional painters. It forces more thoughtful colour mixing, tends to produce more harmonious, unified paintings (since every colour is mixed from the same small family), and is often recommended for beginners learning to understand colour relationships.
About These Three Palettes
The Zorn Palette is named after Swedish portrait painter Anders Zorn and is prized for how much it can achieve with just four colours. The Split-Primary Palette pairs a warm and cool version of each primary colour to unlock a wider range of clean secondary colours. The Limited Earth Palette is a popular landscape and plein air choice built around two warm earth pigments and a single blue.
Getting Started
If you are new to limited palettes, the Zorn Palette or Limited Earth Palette are good starting points because they use only four tubes of paint. Try mixing a full range of values and temperatures from just those four colours before reaching for anything else.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a limited palette?
A limited palette is a deliberately small, restricted set of paint colours (often four to seven) used to mix every colour in a painting, rather than buying a very wide range of premixed tubes.
What is the Zorn Palette?
A four-colour palette (plus white) of titanium white, yellow ochre, cadmium red and ivory black, named after Swedish portrait painter Anders Zorn, known for producing a wide range of believable flesh tones and neutrals.
What is a split-primary palette?
A palette that uses two versions of each primary colour, one warm and one cool, plus white, allowing brighter and more accurate secondary colour mixes than a single-red, single-yellow, single-blue set.
What is a limited earth palette?
A palette built around warm earth pigments, typically yellow ochre and burnt sienna, paired with a single blue and white, popular for landscape and plein air painting.
Why would I paint with fewer colours instead of more?
A smaller palette forces more deliberate colour mixing, tends to produce more visually unified paintings, and helps build a stronger understanding of how colours relate to each other.
Can I still get bright, vivid colours with a limited palette?
It depends on the palette. The Zorn and Earth palettes are intentionally muted and cannot produce vivid greens or purples, while the split-primary palette is specifically designed to allow brighter secondary colours.
Will these exact HEX codes match my physical paint tubes?
Not exactly. These are digital approximations of traditional pigment names. Actual colour depends on the specific brand and pigment formulation you use.
Is this tool free to use?
Yes, this tool is completely free to use with no sign-up required.
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