USWDS uses a 100-point scale to communicate a color token’s grade, where 0 is pure white and 100 is pure black. Grade is a way to express how light or dark a color is.
A System token’s color family typically has a conventional color name, like red or blue-warm, and a theme token’s color family has a role-based name, like primary. Each contains a number of individual colors, distinguished from each other by the brightness or saturation.
Throughout our documentation and guidance, we’ll use the terms “color,” “color family,” and “grade” - but what do we mean when we use them?Ĭolor is any specific swatch in our System token palettes, like red-50, primary-base, or indigo-warm-60v.Ĭolor family is a group of colors that all have the same hue on a color wheel (refer to USWDS color wheels). Sample contract language for 21st Century IDEA
