A mystery color fills the outer ring. Recreate it in the inner ring with the hue, saturation and lightness sliders, confirm your match, and score up to 100% per round — with tolerance for a perfect score. Ten rounds. How close can you get?
Match the inner circle to the outer ring — when they look identical, confirm it.
What is the Guess the Color game?
Guess the Color is a free online color matching game inspired by the classic Color Game. A mystery target color fills the outer ring. Your job is to recreate it in the inner circle using three HSL sliders — hue, saturation and lightness — or by typing a hex code. When the inner circle visually blends into the outer ring, you confirm the match.
Scoring uses perceptual color distance (Delta-E in CIE Lab space), the same metric color scientists use to measure how different two colors look to the human eye. The game has a built-in tolerance, so if your guess is very close — even a pixel or two off — it still earns a perfect 100%. A game spans 10 rounds, scored as a final percentage out of 1000 points.
Why hue, saturation and lightness?
HSL mirrors how people actually think about color. Hue is the pure pigment — red, green, blue, and everything around the wheel. Saturation is how intense that pigment is, from grey to vivid. Lightness is how bright or dark it reads. Tuning one slider at a time in this order is the fastest path to a match, which is exactly why the classic game uses these three controls instead of raw RGB values.
Why ΔE beats raw RGB distance
Raw RGB arithmetic thinks #804000 and #800040 are as far apart as #808000 and #008080 — but your eye knows better. Delta-E maps colors through a perceptual space where equal numeric differences represent equal visible differences, so the game rewards guesses that genuinely look right rather than numbers that merely add up.
Tips to score 90+ every round
Guess the Color FAQ
What is the Guess the Color game?
A free online color matching game: the outer ring shows a mystery target color and you recreate it in the inner circle using hue, saturation and lightness sliders (or a hex input). Confirm the match and score up to 100% per round based on perceptual color distance.
How is my score calculated in the color guessing game?
Your guess and the target are compared using Delta-E (ΔE) in CIE Lab color space. Because of the built-in tolerance, guesses within about 3 ΔE earn a perfect 100%. Beyond that, the score falls smoothly with distance. A game is 10 rounds, scored out of 1000 points and shown as a final percentage.
What does the inner and outer ring mean?
The outer ring is the target color you are trying to match; the inner circle is your current guess. As you tune the sliders, the inner circle changes until it visually merges with the ring — the signal to confirm your match.
What is Delta-E color distance?
Delta-E (ΔE) measures how different two colors appear to the human eye in perceptual color space. ΔE under 1 is invisible to the eye, under 5 is an excellent match, and above 20 the colors clearly differ. The game uses ΔE so scores reflect what you actually see.
How many rounds are there and what is the maximum score?
Every game is 10 rounds with a fresh random target each time. Each round is worth up to 100 points including the perfect-match tolerance, so the maximum game score is 1000 points — displayed as a percentage. Your best total is saved in your browser between sessions.
Can I play the color matching game on my phone?
Yes — the game is fully responsive with large touch-friendly sliders, a hex input for precise entries, and local storage for your best score. Play it anywhere.
How can I get better at matching colors?
Tune one slider at a time in the order hue, saturation, lightness; squint to compare the circles as flat shapes; and study the per-channel gaps after every verdict. The built-in tolerance means close is rewarded generously, so lock in confident matches.