Briefle words · Data & charts
Categorical palette
Also called qualitative palette
A set of clearly different hues used for categories that have no natural order.
Say it to an AI
Bar chart of 2026 donations per campaign in calendar order, with the value on each bar. Use a highlight color on Harvest appeal only and keep the other five bars in light grey for context; a categorical palette is wrong here because the chart is about one campaign.
How an expert would brief the stronger version of “Campaign donations chart”.
See it
Try it as a puzzle →Fundraising overview in the dashboard of a community food-bank nonprofit.
Why: B assigns blue, amber, green, violet, pink and teal to six campaigns even though the question is about one of them.
More ways experts use it
Donut chart of revenue by channel with a legend beside it. Use a colorblind-safe categorical palette (Okabe–Ito style: blue, orange, green, pink) with a neutral grey for Referral, so every slice maps to its legend swatch at a glance. No single-hue ramps for unordered channels.
Revenue by channel · UI designDonut of September tickets by category with a legend of shares. Keep the top six categories and collapse the rest into an Other category (top-N grouping) in neutral grey, so the categorical palette only has to cover seven slices and nothing under 1% gets its own color.
Ticket categories donut · Data & charts
Related words
Room 1 · Essentials
Learn “Categorical palette” in a five-minute lesson