Skip to content

Accent color and shades

Windows generates an accent palette based on the current accent color. It consists of 7 colors:

  • 3 dark variants (-3, -2 and -1)
  • the original accent color (A)
  • 3 light variants (+1, +2 and +3)

Accent palette example

For the current accent color we'll use   #0078D4 (the default accent color). The output values shown bellow were generated on a Windows 11 machine.

For simplicity, you can get a specific accent color shade from one of the following variables:

Variable Example color output
accent_light (or accent_dark_mode)
#4CC2FF   #4CC2FF
accent_normal
#0078D4   #0078D4
accent_dark (or accent_light_mode)
#0067C0   #0067C0

Here's an example for printing them in the console:

import winaccent

print(f"accent_light: {winaccent.accent_light}")  # winaccent.accent_dark_mode returns the same color
print(f"accent_normal: {winaccent.accent_normal}")
print(f"accent_dark: {winaccent.accent_dark}")  # winaccent.accent_light_mode returns the same color

If you need a different shade than the ones listed above, here's the complete list of variables:

Variable Example color output
accent_light_3
#99EBFF   #99EBFF
accent_light_2
#4CC2FF   #4CC2FF
accent_light_1
#0091F8   #0091F8
accent_normal
#0078D4   #0078D4
accent_dark_1
#0067C0   #0067C0
accent_dark_2
#003E92   #003E92
accent_dark_3
#001A68   #001A68
import winaccent

print(f"accent_light_3: {winaccent.accent_light_3}")
print(f"accent_light_2: {winaccent.accent_light_2}")
print(f"accent_light_1: {winaccent.accent_light_1}")
print(f"accent_normal: {winaccent.accent_normal}")
print(f"accent_dark_1: {winaccent.accent_dark_1}")
print(f"accent_dark_2: {winaccent.accent_dark_2}")
print(f"accent_dark_3: {winaccent.accent_dark_3}")

Note

accent_dark_mode, accent_light and accent_light_2 return the same color. accent_light_mode, accent_dark and accent_dark_1 also return the same color.

Note

The accent palette generation algorithm is slightly different in Windows 11 from the one in Windows 10. Here's an example with the   #FF8C00 (Gold) accent color on both Windows 10 and 11:

Windows 10 Gold accent palette
Windows 10

Windows 11 Gold accent palette
Windows 11

Note

In Windows 8.x there's no accent palette generation algorithm. For maintaining compatibility, winaccent will automatically generate a palette using a custom algorithm that tries to immitate the one from Windows 10. It's not perfect, but there's still room for improvement.

Using the same accent color as in the example above with Windows 10 and 11 on Windows 8.1 will give this result (Windows 8.0 is limited to only a few predefined accent colors):

Windows 8.1 Gold accent palette
Windows 8.1

You can also try it without installing anything here.

Warning

The color variables will return the colors in HEX strings (e.g. #RRGGBB). If you need an RGB tuple instead of a HEX color string, use the hex_to_rgb() function. See HEX string color to RGB integer tuple function for more information.

Note

You can also force winaccent to use the accent color provided by DWM (ColorizationColor in Windows 8.x and AccentColor in Windows 10 and 11 in the registry) and generate the accent palette accordingly. To do that, you have to enable the get_accent_from_dwm flag. See get_accent_from_dwm flag for more information.

You may want to take a look at Microsoft's accent color guidelines. You can do that here.