Have you ever spent way too long picking a color palette… only to apply it and immediately feel betrayed? Like. Excuse me. You were beautiful five minutes ago.
You chose a sweet blue. An earthy green. I cheerful tangerine. They looked stunning in those little swatches... sophisticated and intentional. Like they were chosen by a person who understands color theory!!
And then you start actually using them in your illustration and suddenly everything looks… flat. Or muddy. Or like it’s all blending together and losing impact. So you tweak the hues and adjust the saturation. Maybe you even scrap the whole thing and start over.
Because it makes sense to assume the problem is your color choices, right?
Wrong.
It’s not your colors. It's a sad but eye-opening truth, and once you see it, you won't unsee it.
Here's what actually needs adjustments: It’s your values.
And I promise this is not a scary, technical lecture moment. Stay with me.
What’s actually happening
Value is just how light or dark a color is. That’s it.
The sneakiest thing is this: two completely different colors can have the exact same value, which means when you put them next to each other, your brain can’t clearly separate them. And when your brain can’t separate them, your artwork feels muddy. Or flat. Or confusing. Even if the colors are technically beautiful.
Your brain actually reads light and dark before it reads color.
So if the light and dark structure isn’t clear, nothing else can fully save it.
The fastest value check you can do
Before you throw out your palette again, do this: desaturate your artwork.
- If you’re in Procreate, add a layer to the top of your layers panel, fill it with black, and set the blend mode to Color.
- If you’re working traditionally, snap a photo with your phone, go to edit, and slide the saturation down all the way down.
Now look at it. Do you see:
✔️ Clear light tones?
✔️ Clear dark tones?
✔️ A range of mid-tones?
Or does it all collapse into one similar gray?
If it’s the last one, congratulations. You’ve found your actual problem. And it’s fixable.
The mid-tone comfort zone
It's easy to accidentally build entire pieces in mid-tones...
"I don’t want to go too dark because it feels intense."
"I don’t want to go too light because it feels stark."
So we stay in the safe middle. Mid-tone blue. Mid-tone orange. Mid-tone green.
Mid-tone next to mid-tone. Mid-tone overlapping mid-tone. And then we’re confused when nothing stands out.
Listen, you can absolutely use soft palettes. You don’t need dRaMATic black-and-white contrast in every piece. But you do need separation. Even subtle separation.
You need something that clearly says, “this is lighter" and something that clearly says, “this is deeper..” Otherwise everything just hums at the same volume.
You don't have to abandon colors you love
This is the part I wish someone had explained to me earlier: fixing a value problem does not mean changing your hue. If you love that dusty blue, keep it!
Just decide:
Is this my mid-tone?
If yes, what’s my lighter version?
What’s my darker anchor?
You can keep your exact blue and simply add a much lighter tint of it somewhere else in the piece. Or keep your exact orange and introduce a darker element that grounds the composition. You can even use what looks like a “light blue” as a neutral. Neutral doesn’t have to mean beige or gray. It just means it behaves quietly in the structure to give your art some breathing room.
When you start thinking in terms of light, mid, and dark instead of just “these are pretty colors,” alllll of your artwork starts to look intentional.
A simple reset if you're stuck
If you’re staring at something right now thinking, “Why does this look off?” try this approach:
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Choose your main color (or two).
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Intentionally add:
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One clearly lighter tone
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One clearly darker tone
They don’t have to be extreme. They just have to be different enough that your brain can tell them apart.
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Then run the grayscale test again.
If you can clearly see separation in black and white, your full-color version will likely feel more cohesive too.
The question to ask instead
Instead of asking: “why don’t these colors work?”
Start asking: “where is my value contrast missing?”
That question is powerful because it gives you something specific to adjust. Not your taste. Not your style. Not your identity as an artist.
Just the lightness and darkness relationships inside the piece. And that’s a much smaller, more solvable problem.
If your art has been feeling muddy lately, I want you to pause before you blame your palette. Desaturate it. Look at it obejctively. You might find that your colors were never the problem at all.
I mean it when I say that once you see that, you’ll never unsee it.
Want to walk through my process on creating your signature color palettes in Procreate? I made a whole class on it with interactive worksheets because I'm such a color nerd. Watch it right here!
I've also compiled ALL of my own color palettes that you can steal (yes, 150+ color palettes FOR FREE) and import into Procreate right now! 👇
