Tol Sunset
Paul Tol — sunset scheme
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#364b9a -
#6ea6cd -
#98cae1 -
#eaeccc -
#fdb366 -
#f67e4b -
#a50026
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
Sunset is Tol's diverging scheme: deep blue through pale blue to a cream center, then amber to a dark red. Published as 11 colors with a stated white for missing data, it is his color-vision-safe answer to RdYlBu, and the two arms are matched in lightness so neither reads as more extreme. This entry takes 7 of the 11 by even index, symmetric about the center color, so the balance is preserved and no value is interpolated.
When to use it
The diverging palette to choose when your readers expect blue-to-red but you also need the map to work for red-green color vision deficiency — election swing, temperature anomaly, change over time. Its center is a warm cream rather than white, which keeps the zero class visible on a light basemap where RdYlBu's pale yellow tends to vanish. Keep the class count odd so the neutral band lands on the zero break.
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.