Color Palettes

A Palette is a named, ordered list of colors that auto-cycles across plots. Palettes are used to assign consistent, visually distinct colors to multiple series without specifying each one manually.

Using a palette

Auto-cycle across plots

Pass a palette to Layout::with_palette() and kuva assigns colors in order to each plot that does not already have an explicit color set:

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
use kuva::render::layout::Layout;
use kuva::render::palette::Palette;

let layout = Layout::auto_from_plots(&plots)
    .with_palette(Palette::wong());
}

Manual indexing

Index directly into a palette with []. Indexing wraps with modulo, so pal[n] is always valid regardless of palette size:

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
let pal = Palette::tol_bright();
let color_a = &pal[0];  // "#4477AA"
let color_b = &pal[1];  // "#EE6677"
let color_c = &pal[7];  // wraps: same as pal[0]
}

CLI

kuva scatter data.tsv --x x --y y --palette wong
kuva line data.tsv --x-col time --y-col value --color-by group --palette tol_muted

Available CLI values: wong, okabe_ito, tol_bright, tol_muted, tol_light, ibm, category10, pastel, bold, plus the LTC palettes below: paloma, maya, dora, ploen, olga, mterese, franscoise, fernande, sylvie, expevo, minou, alger, seafarer, luminaries, casa-natal (an optional ltc- prefix is accepted, e.g. ltc-maya).

For convenience, --cvd-palette TYPE selects a colorblind-safe palette by condition name: deuteranopia, protanopia, tritanopia.

Built-in palettes

Colorblind-safe

Recommendations:

• wong / okabe_ito — best general choice; safe for deuteranopia and protanopia (~7% of males)
• tol_bright — safe for tritanopia; good for presentations
• tol_muted — 10 colors for larger datasets; safe for all common CVD types
• ibm — compact 5-color set from the IBM Design Language

Colorblind condition aliases

These are convenience constructors that return an appropriate palette for a specific condition:

General-purpose

category10 is the default when no palette is set.

LTC palettes

Curated qualitative palettes from loukesio/ltc-color-palettes (MIT licensed), named after Picasso's muses and a few places. They are hand-picked for small-cardinality categorical series where the ColorBrewer/Tableau defaults feel clinical. Hex values are shown so you can lift them directly.

Palette::paloma() (5 colours): soft coral, sage, and butter

#83AF9B #C8C8A9 #F8DA8A #F7BF95 #FE8CA1

Palette::maya() (5 colours): navy, sky, ice, coral, ink

#3D5A80 #98C1D9 #E0FBFC #EE6C4D #293241

Palette::dora() (5 colours): teal, plum, and warm reds

#52777A #542437 #C02942 #D95B43 #ECD078

Palette::ploen() (5 colours): slate blues, mauve, and peach

#3F5671 #83A1C3 #CEB5C8 #FAC898 #B17776

Palette::olga() (5 colours): pastel green, teal, gold, apricot, mauve

#C9E3C2 #8BC8CB #ECCD80 #F5AB70 #9C87A1

Palette::mterese() (5 colours): cream, apricot, pink, and cornflower

#F7DDAA #FAC3AD #F897A1 #9298BA #9CBEED

Palette::franscoise() (5 colours): blues, mauve, and warm reds

#5980B1 #B96A8D #A55062 #E05256 #E9A986

Palette::fernande() (4 colours): coral, yellow, green, blue

#FF7676 #F9D662 #7CAB7D #75B7D1

Palette::sylvie() (5 colours): gold, coral, lavender, teal, pink

#E8B961 #E88170 #C6BDE8 #5DB7C4 #FD95BC

Palette::expevo() (6 colours): high-contrast orange, gold, teal, plum, navy, grey

#FC4E07 #E7B800 #00AFBB #8B4769 #1D457F #808080

Palette::minou() (6 colours): teal, red, gold, green, ink, slate

#00798C #D1495B #EDAE49 #66A182 #2E4057 #8D96A3

Palette::alger() (5 colours): black, teal, sage, gold, red

#000000 #1A5B5B #ACC8BE #F4AB5C #D1422F

Palette::seafarer() (5 colours): deep teal, cream, sage, moss, sand

#013D5A #FCF3E3 #BDD3CE #708C69 #E4A25B

Palette::luminaries() (6 colours): orange, teal, charcoal, ivory, gold, mist

#FF5B04 #075056 #233038 #FDF6E3 #F4D47C #D3DBDD

Palette::casa_natal() (9 colours): vibrant nine-colour set for larger categorical scales

#245E55 #ED773C #808BC5 #C63F3E #EAC119 #EAA7C7 #9ED6DF #1D1D1B #EAE4DA

Custom palettes

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
use kuva::render::palette::Palette;

let pal = Palette::custom(
    "my_palette",
    vec!["#264653".into(), "#2a9d8f".into(), "#e9c46a".into(),
         "#f4a261".into(), "#e76f51".into()],
);

let layout = Layout::auto_from_plots(&plots).with_palette(pal);
}

API reference