Brand & design

OKLab

Example: A bistro's palette tool warns that its proposed gold and mustard chips "feel identical" because it measures the gap in OKLab, where perceived difference is honest, instead of in RGB, where two close numbers can still look worlds apart to the eye.

a perceptual color space — distance in it matches what the eye sees

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Brand & Design

A color space designed so that mathematical distance between two colors matches the perceived difference a human reader sees. Plain RGB does not have this property — two colors close in RGB can look very different, and vice versa. OKLab fixes that by separating lightness (L) from two opponent chroma axes (a, b).

Why it matters

Every reliable color decision — k-means clustering for palette extraction, hue rotation for harmony generation, similarity scoring for "these two chips feel identical" warnings — needs a perceptual space to be honest. Brand Suite runs all of its color math in OKLab and only converts back to RGB for display and export.

Frequently asked

What is OKLab?

OKLab is a color space designed so that mathematical distance between two colors matches the perceived difference a human reader sees. Plain RGB does not have this property — two colors close in RGB can look very different, and vice versa. OKLab fixes that by separating lightness (L) from two opponent chroma axes (a, b).

Why does OKLab matter for a restaurant?

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