Tol Vibrant
Paul Tol — vibrant qualitative scheme
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#0077bb -
#33bbee -
#009988 -
#ee7733 -
#cc3311 -
#ee3377 -
#bbbbbb
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
The vibrant scheme comes from Paul Tol's colour-scheme work at SRON, first set out in technical note SRON/EPS/TN/09-002 and refined across later revisions of his public notes. It is the higher-contrast counterpart to his muted set, intended for figures where lines and points must pop rather than sit back. As with the rest of Tol's work there is no formal license — citation is the expectation — and his pages moved away from personal.sron.nl in 2025.
When to use it
The swatches fall into recognisable families — two blues, a teal, two warm reds, a magenta, a grey — which makes this a good fit for hierarchical categories where sub-classes should read as relatives. Use the family structure deliberately: assign each top-level group a hue family and its children the neighbouring swatches, so the map's structure is legible before the legend is read. It is brighter than Tol Muted, so keep the class count modest and the basemap plain.
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.