Colors, Gradients & Quick Templates

Quick color templates

Above the Dot color field, a Light backgrounds row of small circular swatches shows 20 ready-made colour pairings (like "Indigo Classic" or "Deep Ocean"). Click one to set the Dot color and Background instantly.

Available to every tier, including logged-out visitors — it's not a paid feature. Every pairing has been checked for enough contrast to scan, so the templates are the safe path if you don't want to think about it.

Dark background templates

Below the light row, a second Dark backgrounds group offers 10 presets with a light dot on a dark background (like "Neon Pulse" or "Cyber Cyan") — the style apps such as Spotify use for their own codes.

These read fine on screen and are riskier in print. The reason isn't contrast — it's that scanner software has historically assumed dark modules on a light background, and some decoders still don't try the inverted interpretation. A code with excellent numeric contrast can still scan worse simply because it's the wrong way round.

So use them where you control the medium and can test — a screen, an app, a single poster. Think twice before a large print run, and always test a physical proof first. See scan reliability tips.

Setting your own colors

Use the Dot color and Background color pickers to choose any solid colour.

The generator warns you when the two colours are too close in tone to scan reliably. That warning is a floor, not a target — it fires only when the pairing is genuinely marginal, so a code that clears it is not necessarily a good idea. Aim for a strong difference in lightness, not just in hue.

That distinction is the one that catches people out. Red on green looks violently different to a human eye and can be nearly identical in brightness — which is all a scanner sees, because it converts the image to greyscale before decoding. Squint at your code: if the two colours merge, so will they for the scanner.

Colour rules worth following

• Dark modules on a light background is the combination every scanner handles.
• Aim for a contrast ratio of at least 7:1. Comfortably more than the minimum, which leaves room for print and lighting to eat into it.
• Keep the background genuinely light. A mid-tone background is where most marginal codes come from.
• Never place a code straight onto a photo. Put it on a solid plate — see common scanning failures.
• Test in print, not on screen. Screens are backlit and forgiving; paper and ink are neither.

The full reasoning, with measured contrast ratios, is in QR code colours.

Gradients

Advanced and Business plans can switch either the Dot color or the Background from Solid to Gradient, picking two colours and a linear or radial direction. Basic and logged-out visitors see only the Solid option.

Gradients are the easiest way to make a code fail without noticing, because the contrast check can only look at the overall pairing while the actual risk is local: a gradient that starts dark and ends light will be perfectly readable at one end of the code and marginal at the other. Keep both stops within the same tonal range — two shades of the same dark colour rather than dark-to-pale.

Frequently asked questions