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Collecting qualitative colour palettes

DATE: 2021-08-21

AUTHOR: John L. Godlee

I have been curating a personal R package[1] for a few months now, to try and organise the many snippets of R code that I tend to reuse in different projects. The package isn't on CRAN, but it is on Github for anybody interested. One of the functions I keep is essentially a list of qualitative colour palettes. Some are my original creations, but most are lifted from other packages, or examples I've seen somewhere online. It's incredibly difficult to come up with categorical colour schemes for more than about five categories, and it can be frustrating trying to find colour combinations which maximise readability across a range of colour-blindness conditions, and which look good.

These colours come from CARTOColors[2]:

2: https://carto.com/carto-colors/

Antique:

Bold:

Pastel:

Prism:

Safe:

Vivid:

These colours come from ColorBrewer[3]:

3: https://colorbrewer2.org

Dark2:

dark2

Set1:

set1

Set3:

set3

These colours come from Anton Tsitsulin's Optimal qualitative colour palettes[4]:

4: http://tsitsul.in/blog/coloropt/

Bright6:

Dark6:

Fancy6:

Normal6:

Normal12:

Tarnish6:

These are from Python's Seaborn colours[5]:

5: https://seaborn.pydata.org/

Colorblind:

Deep:

Muted:

Default:

This is the Solarized accent colours[6]:

6: https://ethanschoonover.com/solarized/

solarized accent

And these are my own colours:

Movie:

movie

Highlighter:

highlighter

The function, in case you want to just copy the hex codes:

#' Qualitative colour palettes
#' @return named list of qualitative colour palettes as vectors of hex-codes
#' 
#' @details The \code{color_brewer_*} palettes come from \url{https://colorbrewer2.org/}.
#'     The \code{seaborn_*} palettes come from \url{https://seaborn.pydata.org/}.
#'     The \code{carto_colors_*} palettes come from \url{https://carto.com/carto-colors/}.
#'     The \code{solarized_accent} palette comes from \url{https://ethanschoonover.com/solarized/}.
#'     The \code{coloropt_*} palettes come from \url{http://tsitsul.in/blog/coloropt/}.
#'     Other palettes are original.
#' 
#' @examples
#' qualPal()[[1]]
#' 
#' @export
#' 
qualPal <- function() {
  list(
    movie_4 = c("#117733", "#b58900", "#855C75", "#ED645A"),
    highlighter = c("#bbdf20", "#20dfa3", "#4420df", "#df205c"),
    color_brewer_set1 = c("#e41a1c", "#377eb8", "#4daf4a", "#984ea3", "#ff7f00", "#ffff33", "#a65628", "#f781bf", "#999999"),
    color_brewer_dark2 = c("#1b9e77", "#d95f02", "#7570b3", "#e7298a", "#66a61e", "#e6ab02", "#a6761d", "#666666"), 
    color_brewer_set3 = c("#8dd3c7", "#ffffb3", "#bebada", "#fb8072", "#80b1d3", "#fdb462", "#b3de69", "#fccde5"),
    seaborn_default = c("#1F77B4", "#FF7F0E", "#2CA02C", "#D62728", "#9467BD", "#8C564B", "#E377C2", "#7F7F7F", "#BCBD22", "#17BECF"),
    seaborn_muted = c("#4878D0", "#EE854A", "#6ACC64", "#D65F5F", "#956CB4", "#8C613C", "#DC7EC0", "#797979", "#D5BB67", "#82C6E2"),
    seaborn_colorblind = c("#0173B2", "#DE8F05", "#029E73", "#D55E00", "#CC78BC", "#CA9161", "#FBAFE4", "#949494", "#ECE133", "#58B4E9"),
    seaborn_deep = c("#4C72B0", "#DD8452", "#55A868", "#C44E52", "#8172B3", "#937860", "#DA8BC3", "#8C8C8C", "#CCB974", "#64B5CD"),
    solarized_accent = c("#b58900", "#cb4b16", "#dc322f", "#d33682", "#6c71c4", "#268bd2", "#2aa198", "#859900"),
    carto_colors_antique = c("#855C75", "#D9AF6B", "#AF6458", "#736F4C", "#526A83", "#625377", "#68855C", "#9C9C5E", "#A06177", "#8C785D", "#467378", "#7C7C7C"),
    carto_colors_bold = c("#7F3C8D", "#11A579", "#3969AC", "#F2B701", "#E73F74", "#80BA5A", "#E68310", "#008695", "#CF1C90", "#f97b72", "#4b4b8f", "#A5AA99"),
    carto_colors_pastel = c("#66C5CC", "#F6CF71", "#F89C74", "#DCB0F2", "#87C55F", "#9EB9F3", "#FE88B1", "#C9DB74", "#8BE0A4", "#B497E7", "#D3B484", "#B3B3B3"),
    carto_colors_prism = c("#5F4690", "#1D6996", "#38A6A5", "#0F8554", "#73AF48", "#EDAD08", "#E17C05", "#CC503E", "#94346E", "#6F4070", "#994E95", "#666666"),
    carto_colors_safe = c("#88CCEE", "#CC6677", "#DDCC77", "#117733", "#332288", "#AA4499", "#44AA99", "#999933", "#882255", "#661100", "#6699CC", "#888888"),
    carto_colors_vivid = c("#E58606", "#5D69B1", "#52BCA3", "#99C945", "#CC61B0", "#24796C", "#DAA51B", "#2F8AC4", "#764E9F", "#ED645A", "#CC3A8E", "#A5AA99"),
    coloropt_normal6 = c("#4053D3", "#DDB310", "#B51D14", "#00BEFF", "#FB49B0", "#00B25D", "#CACACA"),
    coloropt_bright6 = c("#EFE645", "#E935A1", "#00E3FF", "#E1562C", "#537EFF", "#00CB85", "#EEEEEE"),
    coloropt_dark6 = c("#005900", "#000078", "#490D00", "#8A034F", "#005A8A", "#443500", "#585858"),
    coloropt_fancy6 = c("#56641A", "#C0AFFB", "#E6A176", "#00678A", "#984464", "#5ECCAB", "#CDCDCD"),
    coloropt_tarnish6 = c("#274D52", "#C7A2A6", "#818B70", "#604E3C", "#8C9FB7", "#796880", "#C0C0C0"),
    coloropt_normal12 = c("#EBAC23", "#B80058", "#008CF9", "#006E00", "#00BBAD", "#D163E6", "#B24502", "#FF9287", "#5954D6", "#00C6F8", "#878500", "#00A76C", "#BDBDBD")
  )
}