From the brushstroke at the forge to the first die roll.
The ultimate color companion app for tabletop gamers and hobby painters alike.
Explore a universe of color, forge and manage your painter's hoard.
Find Paint by Hue, Saturation & Value
A hex code tells you how a screen builds a colour — its red, green and blue channels. It does not tell you what a painter needs to know: which colour it is, how intense it is, and how light or dark it is. This tool searches the catalogue by those three properties instead, so you can ask for something no name or hex search can express: a deep, saturated blue for mixing; a chalky mid-tone for a base coat; a near-grey with just a hint of green in it.
It is most useful when choosing a paint to mix with. Darkening a colour without dulling it, for instance, needs a partner that is high in saturation and low in value — black is neither, which is why adding black so often turns a rich colour to mud. Set the sliders to the profile you need and every qualifying paint appears, across all brands, filtered to your Hoard if you want it.
Colour profile
Hue family
3811 paints match
showing 1–10 · page 1 of 382How to search paints by hue, saturation and value
Every colour can be described three ways at once. A hex code such as #03134E lists the red, green and blue channels a screen mixes to display it — useful to a monitor, not to a painter. The same colour in HSV reads as 227° hue, 96% saturation, 31% value: a blue, almost fully intense, quite dark. That second description is the one you can act on, and this tool searches by it. Pick a hue family, set how intense and how light or dark you want the paint to be, and every match in the catalogue appears at once.
The three controls are independent. Hue is the colour itself, measured as an angle around the colour wheel — 0° red, 120° green, 240° blue. Saturation is how far the colour sits from grey: 0% is a neutral, 100% is as intense as that hue gets. Value is how light or dark it is, from black at 0% to full brightness at 100%. Leave a slider at its full range to ignore it entirely.
Choosing a paint to mix with
This is where searching by value and saturation earns its keep. To deepen a colour without dulling it, you need a partner that is dark but still intense — high saturation, low value. Black fails on both counts: it has no saturation at all, so it drags everything toward grey, which is why mixing black into a rich colour so often produces mud rather than shadow. Filter for saturation above 80% and value below 35% and you get the paints that will darken a colour while keeping it alive. The same logic works in reverse for highlights, where you want high value without losing saturation.
Why some paints disappear from a hue search
Hue stops carrying information at the extremes. A near-black or a near-grey still has a hue number, but it is arithmetic noise rather than a colour you could name — which is why an unfiltered search for blues would otherwise return black paints. When you filter by hue, paints below roughly 10% value or 10% saturation are left out. Switch the hue filter off to bring your blacks, whites and greys back into the results.
What are hue, saturation and value?
They are three ways of describing one colour. Hue is which colour it is, as an angle on the colour wheel (0° red, 120° green, 240° blue). Saturation is how intense it is, from grey at 0% to fully vivid at 100%. Value is how light or dark it is, from black at 0% to full brightness at 100%. Together they describe a colour the way a painter thinks about it, rather than the way a screen builds it.
Why search by HSV instead of by hex code?
A hex code only helps when you already know the exact colour you want. HSV search answers a different question: which paints have a particular character. “A dark but intense blue” or “a washed-out mid-tone green” cannot be expressed as a hex code, but both are single queries here.
How do I find a paint to darken a colour without dulling it?
Filter for high saturation and low value — try saturation above 80% and value below 35%. Those paints are dark while still carrying strong colour, so they deepen a mix instead of greying it. Black has zero saturation, which is why adding black often turns a rich colour muddy.
Why do black and grey paints vanish when I filter by hue?
Because hue becomes meaningless at very low value or saturation. A near-black technically has a hue, but it is numerical noise, so including it would put black paints in every colour search. Paints below about 10% value or 10% saturation are excluded while the hue filter is on — turn it off to see them.
Can I search only the paints I already own?
Yes. Turn on “Only paints in my Hoard” and results are limited to your own collection, which is the quickest way to find a mixing partner you can reach for right now.