Purple–Orange
ColorBrewer 2.0 (Brewer & Harrower)
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#5e3c99 -
#b2abd2 -
#f7f7f7 -
#fdb863 -
#e66101
On a map
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
PuOr is a diverging scheme from ColorBrewer, the cartographic palette system Cynthia Brewer developed with Mark Harrower at Penn State and released in 2002. Like BrBG it was chosen for a hue opposition that survives red-green color vision deficiency, pairing violet against orange instead of red against green. ColorBrewer's per-scheme annotations — print-safe, photocopy-safe, CVD-safe — remain the reason mapmakers still reach for it two decades on.
When to use it
The strong hue contrast makes Purple–Orange good for bimodal data, where two populations sit either side of a gap and you want each cluster to read as its own thing. It also works for opposed-category maps — one party against another, gain against loss — where neither side should look like the 'default'. Keep the near-white midpoint on a visible break, and pick a neutral basemap so the orange arm does not compete with warm road casings.
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.