What colors are Tuscan?

Terracotta, ochre, raw and burnt sienna, umber, olive, cypress green, grey pietra serena sandstone, and pale travertine and stucco cream. They are the colors of the local clay, stone and vegetation rather than a chosen scheme.

What is the main Tuscan color?

Terracotta, around #C67B5C. It is the fired clay of the roof tiles, and it is the color the whole palette is usually built outward from.

Why are Tuscan colors so muted?

Because they come from iron oxide pigments, which are inherently low in chroma. Measured in OKLCH the ten shades on this page average 0.068 chroma against 0.108 for this site's color catalog as a whole, and none exceeds 0.122.

Is Tuscan the same as terracotta?

No. Terracotta is one color in it, and the page for that single shade is at /colors/terracotta/. Tuscan is the whole set, including the greens and the pale stone that give the terracotta something to sit against.

Which Tuscan colors work for text?

Only the dark ones. Cypress reaches 9.5:1 against white and umber 7.9:1, both clearing WCAG AA. Terracotta at 3.29:1 is limited to large text or fills, and travertine and stucco cream, at 1.45:1 and 1.27:1, are backgrounds only.

Tuscan colors: the palette of terracotta, ochre and cypress

Palettes built around tuscan. Click any swatch to copy its hex code.

The Tuscan palette is what a landscape looks like when its buildings are made of it: fired clay roofs, ochre stucco, grey sandstone, olive and cypress. Every color in it came out of the ground within sight of the walls it ended up on. Hex codes and matching four-color palettes below.

#7F656B

#884F4D

#D5B2A4

#6D5130

#C39E55

#A08400

#6F6F00

#47571C

#5C4D43

#7D6557

#A07E61

#B79D86

#473929

#776139

#9F8F6A

#CAC096

#AF9B7F

#857853

#5A5737

#323725

#CB8270

#B07153

#94614A

#8A4702

#C8B69F

#968B7F

#6C6257

#483B2D

#8E5B58

#A36C4E

#976511

#5B512F

#705133

#B47F28

#A07354

#008EC7

#822F29

#DF8556

#CB9857

#B29218

#4E463C

#765F3C

#868170

#ABA06F

#946500

#7A6000

#976B21

#9BA3E5

#544A3D

#7C692E

#958E57

#A5B785

#BA8B6C

#C9B498

#908863

#A5AA89

#835A31

#A56E20

#AE8D56

#C5A86F

#A67E43

#967800

#CD9E71

#0A98D5

#823D39

#A2543B

#C56A33

#C8936E

#574C43

#7E695B

#A38972

#BFAE9F

#DABE9E

#A5998B

#896E50

#5C4C38

#D9A376

#B4904D

#8A7D42

#636B00

#C08093

#D07A7E

#DD7E6A

#6E4832

#56472B

#766446

#91856F

#B3A58C

#DD9F75

#AF763B

#C86A30

#0090A7

#CBA383

#AF8145

#83672D

#584D28

Named shades and close relatives

The palette is a geology report

Most named palettes are a mood. This one is a material list. Terracotta is literally "baked earth" in Italian - clay fired until the iron in it oxidises red. Ochre, raw sienna, burnt sienna and umber are all iron oxide pigments dug out of the same region, and two of them are named after the places they came from: sienna after Siena, umber after Umbria. Pietra serena, the grey-blue sandstone in every Florentine doorway, is quarried a few kilometres outside the city.

That shared origin is why the colors agree with each other. They are not a designer's selection of things that happen to look good together; they are variations on one chemistry, seen under one sky. Olive and cypress complete it because those are the two plants that grow in the same soil.

Why it never looks garish

Because it physically cannot. Iron oxide pigments are muted by nature, and the numbers bear it out: the ten shades above average a chroma of 0.068 in OKLCH, against 0.108 across this site's whole color catalog, and none of them passes 0.122. There is no neon in the ground.

This is the useful part when borrowing the palette. Reach for a saturated terracotta and the scheme stops reading as Tuscan and starts reading as autumn clip art. The restraint is not stylistic taste, it is the actual constraint the original materials imposed - which is also why the palette survives being used at large sizes across a whole wall or a whole page.

Using it, and where the text goes

The structure is three bands: pale stone for the ground, warm earth for the mass, and one dark green for the vertical. Drop the green and the scheme goes flat and sandy, which is the most common way this palette is got wrong - cypress is doing more work than its share of the area suggests.

For text, only the dark end is usable. Cypress reaches 9.5:1 against white and umber 7.9:1, so both clear WCAG AA comfortably. The pale end does not come close: travertine manages 1.45:1 and stucco cream 1.27:1, so they are backgrounds and nothing else. Terracotta itself, at 3.29:1, is a fill or a large heading, never body copy. Check any pair you plan to ship in the contrast checker, and see the individual shades on the terracotta, umber and olive pages.

Contrast and readability

The contrast checker reports every level for a given pair and suggests the nearest passing shade on the same hue. The color picker builds this same scale from any color you paste in.

Tuscan color questions

What colors are Tuscan?: Terracotta, ochre, raw and burnt sienna, umber, olive, cypress green, grey pietra serena sandstone, and pale travertine and stucco cream. They are the colors of the local clay, stone and vegetation rather than a chosen scheme.
What is the main Tuscan color?: Terracotta, around #C67B5C. It is the fired clay of the roof tiles, and it is the color the whole palette is usually built outward from.
Why are Tuscan colors so muted?: Because they come from iron oxide pigments, which are inherently low in chroma. Measured in OKLCH the ten shades on this page average 0.068 chroma against 0.108 for this site's color catalog as a whole, and none exceeds 0.122.
Is Tuscan the same as terracotta?: No. Terracotta is one color in it, and the page for that single shade is at /colors/terracotta/. Tuscan is the whole set, including the greens and the pale stone that give the terracotta something to sit against.
Which Tuscan colors work for text?: Only the dark ones. Cypress reaches 9.5:1 against white and umber 7.9:1, both clearing WCAG AA. Terracotta at 3.29:1 is limited to large text or fills, and travertine and stucco cream, at 1.45:1 and 1.27:1, are backgrounds only.

Related colors:taupe, brown, tan, sand, clay, umber. See every shade on the colors index.