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Colour themes

The NSW Government brand colour palette provides a consistent, flexible system built from ten colour columns—Grey, Green, Teal, Blue, Purple, Fuchsia, Red, Orange, Yellow and Brown. Each column includes four tonal rows (01–04), plus white.

Corporate communications

For corporate emails use only the Grey, Blue and Red columns, plus white. This helps strengthen connection to the NSW Government masterbrand.

Non-corporate materials

For non-corporate emails you may use the full palette. However:

  • define a colour theme and apply it consistently
  • choose one or two colour columns (Grey is optional)
  • include a core colour—Blue 01 or Red 02—where appropriate, to maintain brand recognition.

Theme settings

Use the Theme button to preview themes. Choose Brand or Aboriginal colours, then pick a Primary and an Accent colour (a complementary Grey scale is added automatically). The page updates live so you can see swatches, tints and darks for your chosen theme before you implement it in templates.

Why a 19-step scale (50–950)?

Email clients render colour and opacity differently, so fine-grained, opaque steps are more reliable than ad-hoc tints. A 19-step scale gives predictable options for every job without relying on transparency:

  • Light tones (50–250): subtle tinted backgrounds for callouts and banners
  • Mid tones (300–450): light borders, dividers and hover states
  • Solid tones (500–600): solid fills for buttons, badges and pills
  • Dark tones (700–950): icons and text on light backgrounds

This keeps hierarchy clear, maintains consistent contrast, and avoids hacks some clients ignore.

Tokens and formats

Each colour has a ready-to-use token (for example, nsw-aboriginal-blue-600) with values provided in HEX, RGB, HSL and OKLCH. These tokens support a smooth handover between design and development and ensure colours render consistently across major email clients.