Random Color Generator: Color Wheel Spinner

How to use it

1. Spin the color wheelPress SPIN, click the wheel or press Space. The pointer stops on one color and the result shows its name and HEX code.
2. Narrow the list if you likeDelete lines you do not want, or paste a shorter set from the table below. Each line is a name, a HEX code and the slice color.
3. Keep or share the resultTurn on Remove the winner to build a palette without repeats, then copy the Results tab or save the wheel as a link.

What the color wheel does

• Works as a random color picker: each spin lands on one of 139 named colors and shows its HEX code.
• Is a random color wheel with every slice painted in the color it names.
• Makes a color spinner for games: name something of that color, find it in the room, or play a matching card.
• Turns into a color picker wheel for palettes: Remove the winner keeps a color from coming up twice.

What is on this wheel

What the wheel holds

The 139 entries are the named colors of the CSS color standard, the same names a browser accepts in place of a code, such as Tomato, SteelBlue or PapayaWhip. CSS also lists a few second spellings for the same color: Aqua for Cyan, Fuchsia for Magenta, and Grey next to every Gray. Each color appears here once, under one name, so no color has a double chance.

The HEX and RGB values in the table were read from a browser engine, not typed by hand. HEX is the six-digit form used in web design, with two digits each for red, green and blue. RGB gives the same three channels as numbers from 0 to 255. Both describe exactly the same color.

Every slice is filled with the color it names. Pale colors such as Snow, Ivory and GhostWhite are hard to tell apart on a wheel and look almost white; the label and the code in the result tell them apart.

Ways to use a random color

Designers use a random color to break a habit: spin once and build a layout, a logo sketch or a card around whatever comes up. Painters and illustrators use it as a constraint for a quick study, and knitters and crafters use it to pick a yarn or thread to try.

For a palette of three or five colors, switch on Remove the winner in Options and spin several times. Each color leaves the wheel once it is picked, so the palette has no repeats, and the Results tab lists the colors in the order they came up, ready to copy.

In games, a color wheel works as a turn rule: name something of that color, find it in the room, or play a card of the matching color. Shorter lists suit young players, so delete the subtle shades and keep the twelve or so colors everyone can name.

Making your own color list

Each line follows one pattern: a name, then the code you want shown, then a slice color written as a hash sign and six hex digits. The wheel reads the last code on the line as the slice color. You can write any name and any code, so a brand palette, a set of paint chips or a school's team colors all work.

To keep only a family of colors, copy the rows you want from the table, for example every row whose name ends in Blue, and paste them into the entry box as lines of name and HEX. Copy link stores the whole wheel in the address after the # sign, so the list goes with the link and is not uploaded.

How the color is chosen

The winning slice is chosen first with the browser's cryptographic random numbers, using rejection sampling so that every color has the same chance, 1 in 139 on the full wheel. The spin is then animated to stop inside that slice. If one color should come up twice as often, write *2 just before its slice color, as in Tomato #FF6347 *2 #ff6347.