A 50–950 ramp that stays your colour
Lightness on a perceptual curve, hue held exactly, and every step measured for what it can carry.
A 50–950 ramp that stays your colour
Lightness follows a perceptual curve; your colour keeps its own lightness at the step you anchor it to. Chroma falls off toward both ends, because sRGB cannot hold it there.
What each step can carry
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How the steps are placed
Each step has a target OKLCH lightness. Your colour keeps its own lightness at the anchor step and the rest of the ramp shifts to meet it, so the colour you chose survives rather than being snapped to a table.
Chroma follows a curve peaking in the middle. Near white and near black, sRGB simply cannot hold chroma — forcing it produces the muddy 50 and the purple-tinged 950 that most generators ship.
Two failure modes are reported rather than left to be discovered in a component: steps that collapse to the same hex, and adjacent steps too close to tell apart.
Why not just lighten and darken?
Mixing toward white and black in sRGB desaturates unevenly and shifts hue. A blue lightened that way drifts toward cyan; a red darkened that way goes brown.
Moving lightness in OKLCH holds the hue exactly, which is what makes a ramp read as one colour at eleven strengths rather than as eleven related colours.
Where the anchor matters
Anchoring at 500 is the convention and works when your colour is a mid-tone. A pale brand colour anchored at 500 comes back darker than you gave it — anchor it at 200 or 300 instead and the ramp builds around it.