From Primary to Accent: Understanding Material Colors in Design SystemsColor is one of the most powerful tools in a designer’s toolkit. It communicates brand personality, establishes hierarchy, improves usability, and evokes emotion. In modern design systems, particularly those inspired by Material Design, color is structured and codified so it can be applied consistently across products and platforms. This article explores how to choose, implement, and manage Material-inspired color systems—from primary palettes to subtle accents—and how to balance aesthetics with accessibility and scalability.
Why a Structured Color System Matters
A structured color system creates coherence across interfaces and speeds up design and development. Instead of picking colors ad hoc for each screen, a system defines roles (primary, secondary, surface, background, error, etc.), states (hover, active, disabled), and tonal variants. This reduces cognitive load for both creators and users while ensuring accessibility and brand consistency.
Key benefits:
- Consistency across components and platforms
- Scalability for product families and themes
- Accessibility baked into the system through contrast rules
- Efficiency for designers and developers using tokens and variables
Core Roles in Material Color Systems
Material-inspired systems often define color roles rather than a fixed set of named hues. These roles map to UI needs:
- Primary: The main brand color used for prominent UI elements (app bar, primary buttons).
- Secondary (Accent): A supporting color used to highlight, emphasize, or add variety.
- Surface: Colors for cards, sheets, and surfaces that sit above the background.
- Background: The base canvas color.
- Error: Used for destructive or error states.
- On-
(e.g., onPrimary): Colors used for text/icons drawn on top of a colored surface. - Outline/Divider: Subtle tonal values for separation and structure.
Primary and Accent (secondary) are pivotal: primary defines the brand’s visual anchor, while accent provides contrast and emphasis for actions, links, and highlights.
Choosing Primary Colors
Primary colors carry the brand’s emotional weight. When selecting a primary color:
- Consider brand attributes: energetic, trustworthy, playful, luxe, etc.
- Test across surfaces: primary should work as the background for app bars, buttons, and larger layouts.
- Ensure onPrimary (text/icons on primary) meets contrast requirements (WCAG AA/AAA depending on needs).
- Pick tonal variations for different UI states (light, dark, hover, pressed).
Practical approach:
- Start with a strong mid-tone hue for primary (not too light or too dark).
- Create lighter tints and darker shades for elevation and state changes.
- Generate complementary neutrals for surfaces and backgrounds that harmonize with the primary hue.
Role of Accent (Secondary) Colors
Accent colors are action-oriented. They should:
- Be distinct from primary to avoid visual confusion.
- Provide adequate contrast against common surfaces.
- Be used sparingly to draw attention (calls to action, links, active icons).
Accent choices can reinforce brand variations (a single brand may use multiple accents for product lines) or help with color-coding (statuses, categories).
Building a Tonal Palette
Material Design popularized tonal palettes (e.g., 50–900 scales). A tonal palette provides predictable contrast steps and simplifies theming.
Example structure:
- 50–100: very light, used for backgrounds
- 200–400: light tints, subtle surfaces
- 500: core brand color
- 600–900: progressively darker, used for emphasis and text-on-color
Use algorithmic tools (color scales, perceptual color spaces like CAM02-UCS) to create perceptually uniform steps so each increment feels consistent.
Accessibility: Contrast and Usability
Accessibility isn’t optional. Key guidelines:
- Text over colored surfaces should meet WCAG contrast ratios: 4.5:1 for normal text (AA), 3:1 for large text, and 7:1 for AAA where required.
- Provide sufficient contrast for icons and UI controls.
- Offer alternative visual cues (icons, borders) not solely dependent on color.
- Provide color-blind safe palettes—use tools to simulate common forms of color blindness and pick distinguishable hues.
Practical tips:
- Use lighter onPrimary or darker onPrimary depending on primary color luminance.
- Reserve very saturated colors for small elements; overly saturated large areas can cause visual fatigue.
Theming and Dark Mode
Theming reuses the same roles with different tonal mappings. Dark mode requires rethinking surface, background, and emphasis:
- Swap light surfaces for dark surfaces while preserving contrast.
- Primary remains identifiable but may be adjusted in luminance to avoid glare.
- Use elevated surfaces with subtle blur or lighter overlays to indicate depth.
Material Design’s “dynamic color” systems can extract and adapt palettes from images or brand assets, but always validate accessibility after dynamic generation.
Tokens, Implementation, and Scale
Implement color systems with tokens (variables) rather than hard-coded values:
- CSS custom properties, SASS variables, or design tokens (JSON).
- Name tokens by role (e.g., color-primary-500, color-on-primary) not by hue name (e.g., teal).
- Provide a small set of allowed combinations to prevent misuse.
Example token structure (conceptual):
- color.primary.500
- color.primary.700
- color.secondary.400
- color.surface.100
- color.onPrimary
Version tokens and document intended usage in the component library.
Testing and Governance
Maintain a color governance process:
- Document rules: when to use primary vs. accent, allowed contrasts, exceptions.
- Review new color additions—limit palette sprawl.
- Automate checks: linting for token usage, contrast testing in CI.
- Educate teams with examples and do’s/don’ts.
Practical Examples and Patterns
- Buttons: use primary for main CTA, accent for secondary actions when emphasis is needed.
- Navigation: primary color for active state; neutral surfaces for inactive.
- Status: green/yellow/red accents for success/warning/error—pair with icons or labels.
- Charts: use muted tones for background series and reserved accents for focal data points.
Common Pitfalls
- Overusing accents (dilutes emphasis).
- Relying solely on color to convey meaning.
- Choosing primary colors that fail contrast tests in common states.
- Creating too many custom colors without governance.
Conclusion
A well-structured Material-inspired color system balances brand expression, usability, and accessibility through defined roles, tonal scales, tokens, and governance. Primary colors anchor identity; accent colors provide emphasis. With thoughtful choices, testing, and documentation, color systems scale across products and stand the test of theming and accessibility needs.
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