Colour Memory · every answer cited
→ Developer? First call in 5 minutes — Start here

Stop your AI
hallucinating colour.

Free colour APIs tell you what a colour is called. Colour Memory tells you what it means, where it came from, and whether it will get you in trouble. The API that makes your AI the most interesting in the room.

Build on it
MCP · REST API
One endpoint. Dozens of tools. Plug into any AI agent or product.
What you can build
Products on top
Naming tools, brand reports, risk engines, design systems.
The foundation
Thousands of named colours
Dozens of archives. Every colour cited from a primary source.
Connect via MCP → Get API key Try the archive →
0
Hallucinations
Every
Answer cited
One endpoint
All tools included
96/100
Glama quality
Live archive · try it Live
"What colour is grief?" — four archives, four answers
China · Qing
White. The absence of colour is the colour of grief.
Victorian England
Crape black. A Victorian widow was expected to wear it for two years. Society enforced what the law did not.
Brazil · Catholic
Purple. Between life and death.
West Africa · Andes
Red. Both traditions. Same answer.
None of them agree. That disagreement is the intelligence.
"What colour signals legitimate authority?"
Qianlong Imperial Yellow
China archive · Qing Court
Reserved exclusively for the emperor. Wearing it without sanction was treason. The Forbidden City's roof tiles are still this yellow. You can still read the hierarchy of the entire Qing empire from outside the walls.
#FFCC00 LRV 57.3 Mineral pigment Cultural risk: HIGH
Archive result. Not a guess. Primary source cited.
"What colour should I never use in a global brand?"
Scheele's Green
Pigment Heritage · Carl Wilhelm Scheele 1775
Copper arsenite. Beautiful, stable, lethal. Mass poisoning administered one room at a time. The Victorians defended it in the press until the body count became impossible to reframe. Still cited in toxicology. Your brand does not need this history.
#8DB600 Toxic · arsenic Material risk: CRITICAL
POST /query/hex {"hex": "D4A829"}
Song Gold Sycee
China archive · Song dynasty
Song dynasty gold currency ingots. The standard high-value monetary unit of the imperial economy. Spectral authority without ornamentation.
"dE2000": 0.08,
"display_only": true,
"wcag_body": false,
"wcag_large": true,
"cultural_risk": "low"
The problem

RGB is a pixel format.
Not a knowledge layer.

Stripe is infrastructure for payments. Mapbox is infrastructure for maps. Colour Memory is infrastructure for colour — the foundation reasoning layer that AI agents, design tools, and brand systems build on. Thousands of named colours across dozens of archives. The knowledge layer RGB never was.

01
Colour is culturalThe same green reads as growth in one market and mourning in another. The same red means danger in the West and luck in China. Getting this wrong costs real money.
02
Colour is historicalSome colours carry trade restrictions, imperial prohibitions, or sacred status that no RGB value encodes. Tyrian Purple was literally punishable by death to wear without authorisation.
03
Colour is materialThe same hex looks different on cotton, brick, and screen. Pigment compatibility matters. Mix Verdigris with White Lead in oil and you get Cennini's 1390 guild warning: "mortal enemies in everything."
04
Colour is commercialA product called Warm Amber competes with ten thousand others. A product called Chouara Henna — the ancient tanneries of Fez, documented — owns its search results and justifies its premium.
The foundation · one endpoint

Every colour tool you need.
Build any colour-intelligent product on top.

Add api.colourmemory.com/mcp to Claude, Gemini, or any MCP-compatible agent. All tools load instantly.

query_hex
Match any hex to the nearest historically documented archive colour with cultural provenance and CIEDE2000 accuracy.
query_conceptual
Search the archive by concept, mood, or culture. "Ottoman luxury," "Victorian grief," "the sea at dusk" — all return real archive results.
colour_name_generator
Generate archive-verified product colour names with provenance citations. Geographical, poetic, literary, material styles.
cultural_risk_assessment
Score any hex or palette for cultural sensitivity across global markets. Warnings, positives, context-dependent readings.
palette_verdict
Score a palette 0–100. Identify the weakest colour. Get a concrete suggestion for what to add.
palette_iterate
Refine a palette with natural language. "More melancholic." "Too corporate — add warmth." Returns archive-grounded adjustments.
palette_compare
Deep comparison of two palettes: timelessness, commercial strength, cultural depth, winner verdict.
palette_export
Export to CSS custom properties, Figma tokens, Tailwind config, or JSON. Each colour named from the archive automatically.
accessibility_check
WCAG 2.1 AA/AAA contrast ratios. EU Accessibility Act compliance. Pass/fail for every colour pair.
simulate_colour_blindness
Protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia simulation using the Brettel-Vienot-Mollon model. Returns adjusted hex values.
colour_forensics
Specification safety on any substrate. Material risks, three-illuminant light behaviour across D65, F11, and incandescent.
design_session
One call: concept → complete palette, cultural narrative, paint matches, accessibility check, image generation prompt.
ecommerce_product_copy
Complete product copy: title, description, SEO meta, alt text, Instagram caption — all grounded in archive provenance.
agent_brief
Colour direction package for image generation models. Archive palette, Midjourney/Flux/DALL-E prompt, hex tokens, lighting notes.
personal_colour_analysis
Seasonal colour analysis from a portrait photo. 12-season system. Best colours, avoid colours, signature colour.
accessibility_matrix
Full WCAG palette matrix in one call. Every foreground/background pair with AA/AAA grades and component usage rules. Replaces 12 separate checks.
brand_audit
One call: palette roles with archive names, full WCAG matrix, cultural risk per colour, design tokens in CSS and Tailwind. No LLM cost. Pure data.
verify_agent_palette
Did your AI image generator actually use the colours you specified? Upload the image, get a fidelity score, dE2000 per colour, and a verdict.
archive_search
Keyword search across the full archive by name, material, pigment type, or historical period. Find Prussian, Ottoman, ochre instantly.
palette_light_dark
Generate light-mode and dark-mode role maps from any palette. Flags missing neutrals, checks body text contrast safety, assigns background and surface roles.
colour_name_slugs
Archive-grounded colour name in every developer format: CSS variable, Tailwind class, TypeScript const, kebab-case, camelCase. One call, paste anywhere.
font_colour_advisor
Given a background and a palette of candidates, returns them ranked by contrast ratio with WCAG grades and specific body, large, and UI text recommendations.
+ 34 more tools
Interior specification, pigment mixing, colour timelines, harmony generation, paint matching, style matching, brand reports, colour forensics, and more.
What Colour Memory actually does

Not a palette fixer.
A colour reasoning layer.

Free colour APIs tell you what colours go together. Colour Memory tells you what they mean, where they came from, and whether they will damage your brand in Tokyo, Riyadh, or Lagos.

Brand audit
One call tells you everything wrong with your palette before your client does.
Roles, WCAG matrix, cultural risk by market, design tokens, suggested additions. No LLM cost. Pure computed data.
/brand/audit
Image generation loop
Brief the image. Generate it. Verify the AI actually used your colours.
agent_brief returns archive-grounded Midjourney and DALL-E prompts. verify_agent_palette scores fidelity with dE2000 per colour.
/agent/brief + /agent/verify-palette
Accessibility intelligence
Every pair, every grade, one call. Then the usage rules your design system can actually use.
accessibility_matrix replaces 12 separate checks. accessibility_usage_rules turns booleans into safe pairs, large-text-only pairs, and component rules.
/accessibility/matrix + /usage-rules
Developer tokens
Archive name to CSS variable in one call. Every format. Every framework.
colour_name_slugs returns CSS var, Tailwind class, TypeScript const, kebab, camelCase, SCSS variable. Grounded in a real archive name with dE2000 distance.
/colour/name-slugs
Cultural risk
That gold reads as imperial in China. That black is bad luck in some markets. Know before you ship.
Per-colour, per-market warnings, positives, and context-dependent readings. Covers China, Japan, India, Islamic markets, Western Europe, USA, West Africa.
/cultural-risk
Archive search
Thousands of named colours. Search by name, material, pigment type, or historical period.
Find every Prussian blue variant across dozens of archives. Every Ottoman colour. Every colour that ever poisoned someone. Keyword search plus CIEDE2000 hex matching.
/archive/search
ChatGPT ran a full brand audit using the API. 11 real endpoint calls. Produced 5 logo concepts, business cards, and a PDF report.
Live demonstration, May 2026. Zero hallucination. Every colour cited.
See all tools →
Keats's Lung
Keats · The Letters
"I know the colour of that blood. It is my death-warrant." He was a trained apothecary-surgeon. He was right.
Tyrian Purple
Phoenicia · Byzantine
10,000 Murex trunculus per gram of dye. Wearing it without imperial authorisation: punishable by death.
Qianlong Imperial Yellow
China · Qing Court
The Forbidden City's roof tiles are still this yellow. The hierarchy of the entire Qing empire is still readable from outside the walls.
Scheele's Green
Pigment Heritage
Mass poisoning administered one room at a time. The Victorians defended it in the press until the body count became impossible to reframe.
Contratación Lacre
Spain · Casa de Contratación
A state secret for two hundred years. A continent funded by a colour whose origin no competitor was permitted to know.
Bengal Indigo
India · Indigo Revolt 1859
The trade war ended not because justice prevailed but because chemistry did.
Qazwini Cosmography Green
Islamic Archive · 13th century
The Byzantine archive recorded the same colour at their map's edge. Their word translated as "where God stops answering."
Ottoman Green Velvet
Islamic · Ottoman
Hierarchically controlled by rank. Pile height specified. The cloth itself was a kind of document.
Keats's Lung
Keats
"I know the colour of that blood. It is my death-warrant."
Tyrian Purple
Phoenicia
10,000 snails per gram. Punishable by death.
Qianlong Imperial Yellow
China
The hierarchy of the Qing empire is still readable from outside the walls.
Scheele's Green
Pigment Heritage
Mass poisoning administered one room at a time.
Contratación Lacre
Spain
A state secret for two hundred years.
Bengal Indigo
India 1859
The trade war ended because chemistry did.
Qazwini Cosmography Green
Islamic Archive
Where God stops answering.
Ottoman Green Velvet
Ottoman
The cloth itself was a kind of document.
From the archive

The foundation knows
what every colour means.

#1A72A8
Pigment Heritage
Egyptian Blue
Calcium copper silicate. Synthesised circa 3000 BC. Oldest known synthetic pigment. Lost for 1,500 years. Fluoresces under near-infrared light.
#1A72A8Pigment
#66023C
Pigment Heritage
Tyrian Purple
Bolinus brandaris. Approximately 10,000 snails per gram. Wearing it without imperial authorisation was punishable by death.
#66023CDye
#FFCC00
China / Qing Court
Qianlong Imperial Yellow
Reserved exclusively for the emperor. Wearing it without sanction was treason. The Forbidden City's tiles are still this yellow.
#FFCC00Mineral
#BF0825
Spain · Casa de Contratación
Contratación Lacre
Cochineal. Dactylopius coccus. Aztec origin. Ten times more potent than any European red. A state secret for two hundred years.
#BF0825Lake
#8B9E2F
Islamic Archive · 13th century
Qazwini Cosmography Green
Al-Qazwini chose this for the margins where the reliable world ended. Byzantine archive: same colour, same edge. "Where God stops answering."
#8B9E2FManuscript
#8DB600
Pigment Heritage
Scheele's Green
Copper arsenite. Mass poisoning administered one room at a time. The Victorians defended it in the press until the body count became impossible to reframe.
#8DB600Toxic
#C8B6B0
Keats / The Letters
Keats's Lung
February 3, 1820. "I know the colour of that blood. It is my death-warrant." He was a trained apothecary-surgeon. He was right.
#C8B6B0Letters

Explore the full archive →

Quick start

Integrate the foundation
in under two minutes.

01
Connect via MCP
Add api.colourmemory.com/mcp to your MCP client. All tools and pre-built prompts load instantly. No config required.
02
Or get an API key
Free trial: 50 archive queries, 50 API calls. No credit card. Full REST access to all endpoints immediately.
03
Ask anything about colour
Name a product colour. Assess cultural risk. Generate a historically grounded palette. Check pigment compatibility. Get ecommerce copy. All from one endpoint.
04
Every answer is cited
Not generated. Not hallucinated. Every result comes from a named archive with a primary source. Anti-hallucination is the core product proposition.
Example calls
# In Claude Desktop — add connector: https://api.colourmemory.com/mcp .up.railway.app/mcp # Then ask Claude: "What colour meant mourning in Qing Dynasty China?" # Claude calls the archive, # returns named colours, sources, # cultural context. Automatically.
# Match a hex to the archive curl -X POST \ .../query/hex \ -H 'X-Api-Key: your_key' \ -d '{"hex": "D4A829"}' # Returns: Song Gold Sycee, # China archive, Song dynasty, # cultural risk: low, dE: 0.08
# Generate product colour names curl -X POST \ .../colour/name-generator \ -H 'X-Api-Key: your_key' \ -d '{ "hex": "#8B4A2A", "product_type": "candle", "style": "geographical" }' # Returns: Chouara Henna, # Vaucluse Ocre, Chinle Stratum # — each with archive citation
Full docs → Get free key →
Glama 96/100
MCP quality score
Smithery verified
98/100 quality score
UK TM 00004387450
Classes 9, 35 & 42
Zero retention
No query logging
GDPR compliant
UK registered · PR Eye Ltd
Pricing

The archive is free.
Intelligence costs credits.

Start with no credit card. Archive searches are generous. Intelligence reports use credits. Your first 3 are included.

Explorer
Free
no card needed
25 archive calls
3 Intelligence credits
Start free
Developer
Free
email required
500 archive calls
10 Intelligence credits
Get key
Studio
£12
/month
2,000 archive calls
50 Intelligence credits
Get Studio
Pro
£39
/month
10,000 archive calls
200 Intelligence credits
Get Pro
Founder Enterprise
£299
/month · 20 slots only
50,000 archive calls
500 Intelligence credits
Get Enterprise

Annual plans and Intelligence credit packs available — see full pricing

The brand is the demo

Colour Memory is
designed by Colour Memory.

The logo, palette, and visual identity are not decorative choices. Every colour was selected through the API — queried against the archive, scored for cultural depth and commercial strength, iterated twice, compared, and exported as CSS. The site is evidence of the product working.

Tools used: /query_conceptual · /palette_verdict · /palette_iterate · /palette_compare · /palette_export

Logo provenance — every stripe cited
#D4A829
China archive
Song Gold Sycee
Song dynasty gold currency ingots. The standard fineness of imperial gold maintained through the assay system. Monetary authority without ornamentation.
#1A5C6E
Austen archive
Northanger Abbey Pool
The mineral blue-green of still water occupying the same stone basin for several centuries. Dark, cool, historical. The colour of enclosed, enduring memory.
#0F2D6B
Finland archive
Saimaa Juhannus
Open lake water reflecting a clear sky at Finnish midsummer. Very dark, highly saturated. The blue of the longest day held in the deepest water.
#0A0A0B
Werner-Syme
Velvet Black
The deepest absorbent black of fine velvet. Werner-Syme Natural System of Colours, 1814. Light trapped in pile rather than returned to the observer. The colour of archive depth.

Generated: /query_conceptual → /palette_iterate × 2 → /palette_compare · Score 85/100 commercial · 91/100 cultural depth