Designing for Color Blindness: A Practical Guide
How to create designs that work for people with color vision deficiency.
Approximately 8% of men and 0.5% of women have some form of color vision deficiency. Designing with color blindness in mind ensures your content is accessible to everyone.
Types of Color Blindness
Protanopia and Protanomaly
Reduced sensitivity to red light. Red appears darker and less vivid. Red-green distinctions are difficult. Affects about 1% of males.
Deuteranopia and Deuteranomaly
Reduced sensitivity to green light. The most common form, affecting about 6% of males. Green appears more beige or brown. Red-green distinctions are difficult.
Tritanopia
Reduced sensitivity to blue light. Blue appears more green, and yellow appears more pink. Rare, affecting less than 0.01% of both sexes.
Achromatopsia
Complete color blindness, seeing only in grayscale. Extremely rare.
Design Strategies
Never use color as the only way to convey information. Add icons, patterns, labels, or text alongside color coding. Use our Color Blindness Simulator to preview your designs.
Choose color combinations that maintain contrast for all vision types. Blue and orange work well because they remain distinguishable across most types of color blindness.
Testing Your Designs
Use our Color Blindness Simulator to see how your color palette appears to people with different types of color vision deficiency. Test all critical color combinations including error states, success indicators, and data visualizations.
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