It’s built for designers and developers who need control over how a scale behaves: lightness range and distribution, chroma handling, number of steps, and how a scale responds to constraints like locks and curves. You shape the scale directly and see the impact of each adjustment in real time.

All calculations are done in the OKLCH color space, which makes it easier to reason about lightness and chroma independently and to generate scales that behave consistently across steps and different displays. This is especially important for UI work, where uneven jumps quickly become noticeable.

Many tools expose parts of this workflow, but rarely all of it in one place. Others lock more precise controls behind subscriptions, which doesn’t always make sense for designers and developers who only need this level of control occasionally.

The goal here is to keep these controls available by default. This is a public, evolving tool you can return to when needed, without committing to a subscription or adapting your workflow around artificial limitations.

Feedback is welcome, and the project is intentionally open. It’s a lab in the literal sense: a space to experiment with color, test assumptions, and refine how scales are built.

Check out the repo at github.com/gilbarbara/color-lab

Alongside this app, there’s also the original ColorMeUp app. It’s a more exploratory tool, focused on inspecting colors, formats, and variations, and experimenting with different color models.

Both apps are open source and built on top of colorizr, a shared library that handles perceptual color logic and scale generation. colorizr can also be used directly in code, independently of either UI.