The museum gift shop
The library, the toolbox, and a thank-you.
Everything at The Dictionary of Color Combinations is free to browse and copy — that will never change. This page is what to reach for next. The books that taught us the material — both volumes of Wada, the Albers classic, and shelf-defining histories of color. A short list of tools that pair with the archive. And a tip jar with the full bundle attached as a thank-you.
Library
The library behind the archive
Every palette in this archive stands on the shoulders of these books. Real criticism, real history, real judgment. If you want to go deeper than hex values, start here.
Torn between the two Wada dictionaries? Vol 1 vs Vol 2, compared plate by plate →
Book links are Amazon Associates affiliate links. Your price is unchanged; a small commission supports the archive. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Studio
Off the screen
A palette is a set of decisions until someone mixes it. These are the materials — Japanese watercolour pans, paper that takes a wash, and the one reference that survives the trip to a printing press.
-
Kuretake
Gansai Tambi 24 — Art Nouveau
Gansai are traditional Japanese watercolour pans — dense, matte and easy to mix, the closest everyday medium to the flat printed colour Wada's plates were made in. This is the Art Nouveau-themed 'II' edition, a different 24 to the standard set.
View on Amazon -
Kuretake
Gansai Tambi 36
The larger pan set. More range means mixing toward a specific plate rather than approximating it from six colours.
View on Amazon -
Strathmore
300 Series watercolour pad, 140 lb cold press
140 lb cold press is the weight that takes a wet wash without buckling — the paper most colour studies end up on.
View on Amazon -
Pentel
Fude Touch brush sign pen
A felt brush tip for the labelling and linework around a swatch study — the annotation half of a colour notebook.
View on Amazon -
Pantone
Formula Guide — coated & uncoated
When a palette leaves the screen, this is the shared vocabulary between you and the press. Coated and uncoated because the same ink is not the same colour on both.
View on Amazon
Amazon Associates affiliate links — your price is unchanged and a small commission keeps the archive free. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Prints & posters
Museum-grade poster sets.
Each palette, printed as a single plate — generous margins, archival matte paper, designed to sit on a studio wall the way Wada's book sat on a studio shelf. Printed on demand, shipped worldwide.
Prints launch after the first batch of early supporters — subscribers hear first.
From the archive
Support the archive The full catalog, on your disk, as a thank-you.
- All 378 palettes (348 Wada + 30 editorial) in five formats
- Figma design tokens (W3C-spec JSON, drag into any file)
- Tailwind v4 + v3 configs — drop into any project
- CSS custom properties — every plate, one stylesheet
- 378 museum SVG plates — print-ready at any size
- Full JSON — colors, names, eras, moods, dominant hues
Launching soon. The free archive stays free, always.
A note from the archive
The archive itself will always stay free — no paywall, no login, no watermarks on the exports. The affiliate links above earn a small commission, the bundle is a tip jar for folks who want to support the work directly, and the prints will be a real product once demand is proven.
If you can't support financially, just share a palette you found useful. Word of mouth is the archive's oldest friend.
— The editors