To document a brand color palette, record four things for every color: its name, the exact values for each medium you use, the job it does, and the pairings it is allowed to appear in. Then keep all of it in one place, and change it only there.
Most palette documents stop after the swatches. The brand book names five colors and shows five squares. Nobody wrote down which one is a page background and which one is a button, so a designer eyedrops the blue from a PNG in a deck, lands two shades off, and the deck ships. A month later the same blue turns up in an email at a third shade.
Below is what goes into each color's entry, how to record the contrast pairings, which rules a hex value cannot carry on its own, and how to get the whole palette in front of the people and the AI tools that use it.
Key Takeaways
- A documented brand color palette gives each color a name, values per medium (hex, RGB, CMYK, and a Pantone reference if you print), a role, and usage rules.
- Naming colors by role ("page background", "primary action") prevents the most common failure: the right value used in the wrong place.
- Record the contrast ratio for every text and background pairing you approve. WCAG 2.2 asks for 4.5:1 on normal text and 3:1 on large text and interface components.
- Rules like "one accent per screen" and "no gradients on the wordmark" need a sentence, because a hex value cannot say them.
- TrueKeep renders your colors as swatches in the portal and serves the palette and its rules to Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor through an MCP connection.
What it means to document a brand color palette
A brand color palette is the fixed set of colors a brand uses. Documenting it means writing down, for each color, everything someone needs in order to use it correctly without asking anyone: the values, the role, the approved pairings, and the limits.
Two people read that document, and they arrive with different questions. A brand manager is checking something: is this teal ours, can the agency use it behind white text. A designer or a marketer is mid-job and needs the value now, in the format their file wants. Serve both in the same entry, with the value at the top and the rule under it.
Color is one section of a larger document. If you are building the whole thing, the brand guidelines template covers the other eight sections and how specific to make each one.
Record every value a brand color needs
One color, one entry. If a format is missing from the entry, the person who needs it guesses, and the palette drifts from there.
Record these for each color:
- Name. Short, and the same name everywhere: in the guide, the design file, and the code.
- Role. What this color is for, in plain words.
- Hex and RGB. The same sRGB color in two notations, which is what MDN's reference on CSS color values documents.
- CMYK. Only if you print.
- Pantone reference. Only if you print with a spot color.
- Token name. If your team builds product interfaces, the name engineers use.
An entry reads like this:
name: Signal Blue
role: primary action, links, one accent per screen
hex: "#1F5AE0"
rgb: "31, 90, 224"
cmyk: "86, 60, 0, 12"
pantone: "2728 C"
token: color.action.primary
verified: 2026-08-14
The tradeoff is upkeep. CMYK and Pantone values are worth recording only if someone checks them on a real press proof. An unverified print value that nobody owns is worse than no print value, because it looks authoritative and the error surfaces after the job is printed. Date every entry, as in the verified line above, so a reader can see how old the number is.
Give every color in the palette a job
Most palette documents list colors by prominence: primary, secondary, tertiary. That ranking tells a designer nothing about where a color goes. Roles do.
Write the role as the place the color is used:
- Page background
- Body text
- Primary action
- Secondary action or border
- Accent, used once per screen
- Success, warning, and error, if you build product interfaces
Google's Material Design 3 color roles name a role for every surface and the text that sits on it. Most brands do not need that many. They do need enough that a brand manager reviewing a layout can look up where each color was supposed to go, and a designer picking a color can find the one meant for the job in front of them.
Write down which pairings pass contrast
A palette approves colors, and pairings are what ship. A color passes or fails a contrast requirement only in combination with another one, so the pairing is the thing to record.
The W3C's WCAG 2.2 minimum contrast requirement sets 4.5:1 for normal text against its background and 3:1 for large text, which it defines as 24px, or 18.66px when bold. A separate requirement covers icons and interface components at 3:1. Measure each pairing you intend to use, then record it:
| Foreground | Background | Ratio | Use for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ink #101014 | Bone #F7F6F2 | 17.6:1 | body text, any size |
| Bone #F7F6F2 | Signal Blue #1F5AE0 | 5.4:1 | button labels |
| Signal Blue #1F5AE0 | Bone #F7F6F2 | 5.4:1 | links, 16px and up |
| Mist #C9CBD3 | Bone #F7F6F2 | 1.5:1 | decoration only, never text |
A ratio is the same in both directions, which is why the two Signal Blue rows match. What changes is what the pair is approved for. Include the pairs that fail, marked as failing: a reader who sees Mist listed at 1.5:1 stops considering it for text, and a reader who sees nothing assumes it was never tested. Measure each ratio yourself with a contrast checker, and record the number you measured. TrueKeep renders your colors and holds the rules you write about them, and it does not adjust a color to make a pairing pass, so the ratio in the table has to be a real one.
The rules a hex value cannot carry
Values cover what a color is. Rules cover how it behaves, and they are the part of a palette most often left in someone's head.
Write each rule as one sentence a person can follow:
- Signal Blue appears once per screen, on the primary action.
- The wordmark is Ink on a light background or Bone on a dark one. No gradient, ever.
- Tints of Signal Blue are allowed at 12% and 24% for backgrounds, and nowhere else.
- Warning Amber is reserved for product interfaces and never appears in marketing.
- When a partner's brand sits next to ours, our accent gives way to neutrals.
These sentences are also the part an AI tool needs most. Ask Claude for a landing page hero with no palette in reach and you get a blue gradient, three accent colors, and text at a contrast ratio nobody checked. Give it the values and these five rules and you get Ink on Bone, one Signal Blue button, and tints where tints are allowed. In TrueKeep, that written-down set of decisions is the design brief, and it sits alongside the swatches rather than in a separate file.
Keep the brand color palette where the work happens
A PDF records what the palette was on the day someone exported it. A team needs what it is today, in the place they are working.
That is the job a brand portal does. In TrueKeep, colors render as actual swatches rather than printed values, so a brand manager sees the color as it will appear instead of reading a code and picturing it. Color lives in the guide and the assets parts of the portal, and the portal setup guide walks through what belongs in each of the four parts.
The palette then reaches the AI tools your team already uses. Connect Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor once through an MCP connection, an open standard documented at modelcontextprotocol.io, and the AI reads the palette and the design brief before it writes or builds anything. The AI connection guide covers the setup. Most of your colleagues will never open the portal, and with the connection in place they do not have to.
One tradeoff stays, whatever tool you use. A palette is only as current as the person who updates it. Name that person before you circulate it, and give them a way to make the change themselves. In TrueKeep, curators edit in the portal, which the editing guide covers, so a corrected value takes minutes instead of a ticket.
FAQ
What should a brand color palette include?
A brand color palette should include every approved color with its name, its role, its values in each medium you use, the pairings it may appear in, and the rules that limit it. A palette that lists only hex values leaves out the part people get wrong, which is where each color goes.
How many colors should a brand palette have?
As many as have a job, which for most brands is fewer than 10. A common shape is one or two brand colors, three to five neutrals from near-white to near-black, and one accent. Add success, warning, and error colors only if you build product interfaces that need them.
Do I still need CMYK and Pantone values?
You need CMYK and Pantone values only if you print. If your brand appears on packaging, signage, or anything else with a press behind it, record those values and have someone verify them on a proof. If everything you make is on a screen, hex and RGB are enough, and unverified print values only add risk.
How do I give my brand colors to Claude or ChatGPT?
Pasting the palette into every prompt works and does not last, because the version in the prompt ages the moment the palette changes. A durable route is a connection the tool reads from: in TrueKeep, an MCP connection lets Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor read the current palette and design brief directly, and the brand kit skill carries the same brand into Claude.
Where should a brand color palette live?
A brand color palette should live in one place that is editable and reachable by everyone who makes work, with every other copy pointing back to it. Exported swatch files on a shared drive go stale, because updating them means exporting again. A PDF has that problem too and is harder to search mid-job.
How often should the palette be reviewed?
Review it whenever a color changes, and on the same schedule as the rest of the brand guide otherwise. The dates on each entry make a stale value visible, which is most of what a review is looking for.
Where to start
A brand color palette is documented when four things are written down for every color: the values, the role, the approved pairings with their measured contrast ratios, and the rules a value cannot carry. Give each color a job, include the pairings that fail as well as the ones that pass, and date every entry so a reader can judge how current it is. Then put the palette where the work happens, both for the people who open a portal and for the AI tools used by everyone who never will. Name the person who keeps it current before you circulate it.
If you want the palette, its rules, and your AI tools reading the same source, get started with TrueKeep and build the color section of your portal first.