Paired
ColorBrewer 2.0 (Brewer & Harrower)
-
#a6cee3 -
#1f78b4 -
#b2df8a -
#33a02c -
#fb9a99 -
#e31a1c -
#fdbf6f -
#ff7f00
A synthetic demo grid, classed with equal intervals — the point is the palette against real basemap ink, not the data. Switch themes to see how much basemap the palette leaves room for.
Metadata
Provenance
Paired is the unusual one in ColorBrewer's qualitative set: its twelve colors come as six light/dark pairs of the same hue, so the palette encodes two levels of structure at once. Brewer built it for maps where categories nest — a class and its subclass, a planned and a built variant. This entry takes the first eight, i.e. four complete pairs. ColorBrewer flags the scheme colorblind-safe only at three and four classes, so at eight this entry claims no CVD safety.
When to use it
The palette to reach for when your categories genuinely pair up: existing versus proposed routes, primary versus secondary of each type, before versus after. Assign the light member to the subordinate category and the dark one to the dominant one and the map explains itself without a legend lookup. If your categories do not pair, use Dark 2 or Okabe–Ito instead — the pairing reads as a claim whether you meant it or not.
License
Apache-style ColorBrewer License (attribution required) · source
The color specification carries this license, which is separate from the MIT license on this site. See attribution.