Red–Blue
ColorBrewer 2.0 (Brewer & Harrower)
-
#2c7bb6 -
#abd9e9 -
#ffffbf -
#fdae61 -
#d7191c
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
RdYlBu is a diverging scheme from ColorBrewer, the palette system Cynthia Brewer built with Mark Harrower at Penn State and published in 2002. Diverging schemes were included for data with a meaningful midpoint — anomalies, differences, surpluses and deficits — where the reader needs to see direction as well as magnitude. ColorBrewer flags this particular scheme as not colorblind-safe, and that warning is carried through here rather than quietly dropped.
When to use it
Use Red–Blue for anomaly and change maps with a real zero: temperature departure from normal, net migration, vote swing, year-over-year difference. Set the class breaks so the pale yellow lands exactly on the midpoint, otherwise the palette will assert a neutral value where none exists. Note the CVD caveat — the red and blue ends collide for readers with red-green deficiency, so prefer vik when an accessible diverging ramp matters more than familiarity.
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.