Coolors VS Colorlab: Which Color Generator Tool Is Best?

Choosing the right color tool can make all the difference for designers and creatives. Two of the most popular options are Coolors and Colorlab. Each has unique features catering to specific needs, whether you're a graphic designer, UI/UX expert, or just someone looking to enhance your visual projects. Let's dive into a comparison of these two platforms based on their features to determine which tool is best for you.

9/24/20243 min read

a box filled with lots of different colored crayons
a box filled with lots of different colored crayons

Feature Comparison: Coolors vs. ColorLab

1. Color Palette Generator

  • Coolors: Renowned for its user-friendly interface, Coolors allows users to generate beautiful color palettes effortlessly. You can easily adjust, lock, and shuffle colors, making it a go-to tool for quick palette creation. It also offers trending palette combinations, making it a great resource for inspiration.

  • ColorLab: With a very similar user interface, Colorlab also allows user to generate beautiful color palettes in one click. User can lock colors as well as adjusting the parameters like hue, lightness and saturation. While Coolors also let user choose specific color scheme (analogous, complementary, etc), you will have to create an account in order to do so while this feature is available for free in Colorlab. Same goes for adding color palette into favourite list.

Winner: both tool offer very similar feature. While Coolors seems to be a bit more advanced on certain aspects, lots of these advanced feature are only available to Pro users. On the other hand, Colorlab is entirely free to use but has a little less customization capabilities when it comes to color palette generation. So this is a draw.

2. Moodboard Generator

  • Coolors: Does not offer a built-in moodboard generator. Users need to export palettes and use external tools to create moodboards.

  • ColorLab: Features an integrated moodboard generator, allowing users to visualize the overall aesthetic of their color palette directly within the platform and export the moodboard template directly to Figma. This is particularly beneficial for branding and marketing professionals who need to present cohesive visual concepts.

Winner: Colorlab

3. Gradient Generator

  • Coolors: Offers a more comprehensive gradient generator with features like multiple color stops, opacity adjustments, and advanced controls. This makes it a better option for designers working on complex digital and print designs.

  • ColorLab: Provides a basic gradient tool, supporting linear an gradients. While effective for simple needs, it lacks advanced customization capabilities. On a positive note, Colorlab let you export you gradient in CSS, Tailwind and Figma.

Winner: Coolors

4. Contrast Checker

  • Coolors: Includes a simple contrast checker tool that helps ensure text and background combinations meet accessibility standards.

  • ColorLab: Offers a more immersive contrast checker, which let you preview on the whole UI what two color contrast would look like. It also provides a preview of UI component such as buttons and icons.

Winner: Colorlab

5. Color Range Generator

  • Coolors: Lacks a dedicated color range generator. Users must manually create variations, which can be time-consuming.

  • ColorLab: Comes with a powerful color range generator, enabling users to explore different shades, tints, and tones of a particular hue. This feature is perfect for creating comprehensive brand guidelines or developing nuanced color systems.

Winner: Colorlab

6. Image Color Picker

  • Coolors: Offers a straightforward image color picker, allowing users to extract prominent colors from an image and create palettes. User can also switch between different color palette present in the picture as well as add extra colors into the palette. Final touch: the integration with unsplash stock image library.

  • ColorLab: Offers a similar image color picker where user, once they upload a picture, will get a cluster of color palette representing the best the image. However it lack more advanced features such as integration with Unsplash images or customization or color palette, adding more colors to the palette

Winner: Coolors

7. Color Analysis

  • Coolors: Provides basic color analysis, mainly for palette creation and contrast checking.

  • ColorLab: Offers similar features as Coolors, with colors details explanation, comparison, color scheme, etc.

Winner: it's a Draw

7. Palette Library

  • Coolors: Provides a list of curated palette library to users. Additionally, user can search for palettes based on specific keywords and user who created an account can also create palette to be displayed in the library

  • ColorLab: Offers similar palette library feature with a never ending inspiration for color palette. However it doesn't offer yet the possibility to search palette by keywords.

Winner: Coolors

Conclusion

After comparing Coolors and ColorLab across various features, it's clear that both platforms offer robust tools for designers. In terms of point-for-point analysis, it's nearly a draw, as both provide essential functionalities like color palette generation, gradient tools, and contrast checkers.

However, ColorLab pulls ahead by offering a set of features that Coolors lacks, such as a built-in moodboard template generator and a comprehensive color range generator. These additional capabilities give ColorLab an edge, making it the superior choice for those seeking a more versatile and powerful design toolkit.