Tints & Shades Generator
Turn any colour into a full tonal scale. Enter a HEX code and instantly see five shades and five tints, ready for planning highlights, shadows and value contrast in your next painting.
Choose a Base Colour
Base HEX: #4A7C59
Tints & Shades Scale
Click any swatch to make it the new base colour. Shades (mixed toward black) are on the left, your base colour sits in the centre, and tints (mixed toward white) are on the right.
How to Use the Tints & Shades Generator
Enter a HEX colour code, or use the Random Colour button, to set your base colour. The scale below instantly shows five shades (darker, mixed toward black) on the left, your base colour in the centre, and five tints (lighter, mixed toward white) on the right. Click any swatch in the scale to set it as your new base colour and generate a fresh scale around it.
How the Maths Works
A tint is created by mixing a colour with white, and a shade is created by mixing a colour with black. This tool applies that mixing directly to the Red, Green and Blue channels of your base colour: for a tint, each channel moves a percentage of the way toward 255 (white); for a shade, each channel moves the same percentage of the way toward 0 (black). The five steps shown are 15%, 30%, 45%, 60% and 75% in each direction, giving a smooth, evenly spaced scale from dark to light.
Using Tints and Shades in Your Artwork
Tints and shades are two of the simplest ways to add depth, highlights and shadow to a painting or illustration without introducing a new hue. A tint of your subject's base colour can suggest where light falls, while a shade can suggest where a form turns away from the light or sits in shadow. Building a small tonal scale like this before you start painting can help you plan value contrast, choose a limited palette, or work out which premixed paint colours to lighten or darken for a particular passage.
Examples
Frequently Asked Questions
What are tints and shades?
A tint is a colour mixed with white, making it lighter. A shade is a colour mixed with black, making it darker. Both keep the same base hue while changing how light or dark it appears.
How is a tint different from a shade?
A tint moves your colour toward white and lightens it, while a shade moves your colour toward black and darkens it. They sit on opposite ends of the same tonal scale around your base colour.
What is the difference between a tint, a shade and a tone?
Tints and shades, which this tool generates, mix a colour with white or black. A tone mixes a colour with grey instead, which mutes it without necessarily making it lighter or darker. This tool focuses only on tints and shades.
How do I generate a scale from my own colour?
Type or paste any valid HEX code into the field above, or use the Random Colour button. The scale of shades and tints updates immediately to match your chosen base colour.
What do the percentages under each swatch mean?
The percentage shows how far that swatch has been mixed toward white (for a tint) or black (for a shade). A 75% shade, for example, has moved three quarters of the way from your base colour toward pure black.
Can I click on a tint or shade to explore it further?
Yes. Clicking any swatch in the scale sets it as the new base colour and generates a fresh set of five tints and five shades around it.
Does this replicate mixing white or black paint into a real paint colour?
Not exactly. This tool performs a mathematical mix in digital RGB colour, which is a useful planning guide, but real paint mixing depends on pigment strength, opacity and the specific white or black you use, so treat the results as a starting reference rather than an exact prediction.
How is this different from the Colour Picker?
The Colour Picker helps you find and read the values of one specific colour. This Tints & Shades Generator takes a colour you already have and builds a full lighter-to-darker scale around it.
How is this different from the Paint Colour Mixer?
The Paint Colour Mixer helps you plan mixing two specific paint colours together. This tool instead builds an evenly spaced tonal scale of one colour lightened toward white and darkened toward black.
Can I use the keyboard instead of a mouse or touchscreen?
Yes. Tab through the HEX field and buttons as normal, and each swatch in the scale is a focusable button that can be activated with the Enter or Space key.
Can I use this tool on my phone or tablet?
Yes. The layout, input field and scale of swatches all resize to work comfortably on phones and tablets as well as desktop screens.
Is my colour data stored or sent anywhere?
No. All of the tinting and shading maths happens directly in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to a server or stored.
Is this Tints & Shades Generator free to use?
Yes, it's completely free to use, with no account, sign-up or download required.
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