Ask HN: Why is the gray color of TailwindCSS dark blue?

4 points by ugur2nd 15 hours ago | 4 comments

The color that comes out when you do "bg-gray-900" is not gray. I checked. It's blue. Dark blue. But why did they do that? Why do they say gray?

jsheard 13 hours ago |
https://tailwindcss.com/docs/customizing-colors
Their "neutral" is the perfect gray you're looking for.
Why their "gray" is actually blue, I have no idea.
brudgers 12 hours ago |
Design Tip Never Use Black
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4357002
authorfly 4 hours ago |
I read this and applied it when it was first on HN.
Must have explained it to 3-4 junior engineers/interns, but could never quite find a link back to it.
Thank you!
seanwilson 7 hours ago |
It's a common UI/web design trick now to brand your color palette more by mixing in a little of your primary color into your "gray" swatch. Gray gets used a lot so this has a subtle but noticeable difference. Tailwind has a few gray swatches you can pick from (https://tailwindcss.com/docs/customizing-colors) where "neutral" is all gray if that's what matches your brand.
I have a tool for creating Tailwind color palettes you might find interesting here (https://inclusivecolors.com) where you can visualize how the hue of Tailwind's "gray" shifts a little to the left and the saturation goes from high to low as the gray gets lighter (you'll need to load the palette first via "Import" then "Tailwind"), and customise it if you want.