Choosing the right color palette is half the battle in pixel art. A restricted palette creates harmony and a distinct visual identity for your game. Here are some of the most iconic retro color palettes you can load directly into PixelPad Pro using the Hex codes below.
The original Nintendo GameBoy hardware could only display four shades of "olive green". This restriction forced developers to master contrast and readability. It remains a beloved aesthetic for retro puzzle and platformer games.
Perfect for futuristic dystopias, metroidvanias, and sci-fi shooters. This palette relies on deep, dark purples for the background and striking neon pinks and cyan blues for highlights and character details.
If you are building a farming simulator, a cozy RPG, or a relaxing puzzle game, warm colors are essential. This palette focuses on earthy browns, soft oranges, and faded greens to give a nostalgic, welcoming vibe.
The original Nintendo Entertainment System had a fixed hardware palette of 54 colors — no custom colors were possible. Game artists had to build entire worlds within this constraint. Some of the most iconic sprites in history, from Mario to Mega Man, were created using subsets of this palette. To replicate the authentic NES look in PixelPad Pro, restrict yourself to shades of brown, orange, tan, and the characteristic NES blue-grays.
The right palette communicates the emotional tone of your world before the player reads a single line of dialogue. Dark, desaturated palettes with occasional bright highlights work well for atmospheric horror and roguelikes. High-contrast, saturated palettes with warm yellows and reds work for energetic action platformers. Muted, earthy tones with soft greens and blues signal cozy, slice-of-life games.
A practical rule used by experienced pixel artists is the "3-4 shades per hue" rule: for each base color in your game (skin, metal, grass, stone), prepare exactly three or four values — a deep shadow, a mid tone, a highlight, and optionally a rim light. This creates visual consistency across all your assets and keeps the total palette manageable.
The website LoSpec.com is the largest community-curated database of pixel art color palettes in existence, with hundreds of named palettes ready to copy as Hex codes. Searching by "hue" or "number of colors" helps you find the perfect match for your aesthetic. Once you find one you like, paste the Hex codes into PixelPad Pro's color picker and save them to your custom swatch panel to use across all your game's assets.
In the PixelPad Pro editor, simply click on the Custom Color Picker tool on the left panel, and type or paste any of these Hex codes (e.g., #0F380F) to start painting immediately. You can save any color to your permanent swatches bar at the bottom of the color panel by right-clicking the color preview and selecting "Add to Swatches".