Tol Muted
Paul Tol — muted qualitative scheme
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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
Paul Tol, an astronomer at SRON, worked out these schemes for the technical note SRON/EPS/TN/09-002 on colour schemes for scientific figures, and has maintained and revised them on his personal pages ever since. The muted scheme is his answer to the high-cardinality case: nine hues that remain separable under the common red-green deficiencies while staying quiet enough to sit behind data. Tol asks for citation rather than imposing a license; note that his pages moved off personal.sron.nl in 2025, so older links now break.
When to use it
Tol Muted is built for the awkward middle of categorical mapping — seven to nine classes, more than a designed set comfortably holds, fewer than warrants an algorithmic palette. Its low saturation is the point: with that many fills on screen, a vivid palette turns a map into confetti, while these recede far enough to keep labels and boundaries legible. It is safe for deuteranopia and protanopia but not tritanopia, so if the tritan case matters use okabe-ito or carto-safe instead.
License
Free to use with citation (no formal license) · source
The color specification carries this license, which is separate from the MIT license on this site. See attribution.