Palettes › PICO-8

PICO-8 Colour Palette

The modern fantasy-console palette. This page lists every colour in the PICO-8 palette used by the 8-bit photo converter, with hex and RGB values, explains where the palette came from and how the tool maps a photo onto it, and shows what it does to a real image.

Published 5 September 2026

Machine

PICO-8 fantasy console by Lexaloffle

Released

2015

Screen

128 × 128 pixels

Colours

16, fixed

Mapping in the converter

Nearest colour by RGB distance

A palette designed, not inherited

PICO-8 is different from every other palette on this site because there was never a physical machine behind it. It is a "fantasy console", a small, deliberately limited game-making environment released by Lexaloffle in 2015 that pretends to be an 8-bit computer from a timeline that never existed. Its creator chose the 16 colours by hand to look good together, rather than being stuck with whatever a video chip could produce. That is why it is so well balanced: it has warm and cool colours, light and dark versions of the important hues, a proper brown, a proper skin tone and a soft off-white.

Those qualities made it a favourite far beyond PICO-8 itself. Plenty of modern indie games and a huge amount of pixel art on the internet use this palette, or a close variant, simply because it is pleasant to work with.

The colours

The names are the ones PICO-8's own documentation uses, in the console's numbering order from 0 to 15. Unlike the NES or C64 values, these are exact, because PICO-8 defines its palette in RGB from the start. Note that "white" is actually a warm cream, #FFF1E8, which is part of why the palette feels friendlier than a set of pure primaries.

How the converter maps a photo to it

Each block takes the nearest of the 16 colours by RGB distance. Because the palette was designed to cover the useful parts of colour space rather than the extremes, most photos land somewhere sensible. Skin goes to light peach or pink with brown in the shadows, foliage to green or dark green, sky to blue or lavender, and neutral areas to one of the two greys.

In the test scene the dusk sky steps through blue, lavender and pink, which is arguably nicer than the source. The spheres each keep their colour and, importantly, their shading, because there is a darker partner for red, orange, green and blue. The soft peach sphere is the best-handled of any palette on the site.

Which photos suit it

• Avatars and profile pictures. Warm, distinct colours that stay readable when tiny. This is the palette recommended in the avatar guide.
• Sunsets, golden hour and warm scenes. The orange, peach, pink and lavender run is made for them.
• Anything meant to look "indie game" rather than "1985". If you want the image to feel current, this is the one.

It has only one true yellow and no bright cyan, so a very sunny beach scene or a bright turquoise sea can come out a little flat. And with a single pure green plus a dark green, dense foliage tends to become two-tone.

Tips for better results

• PICO-8 games are 128 pixels square, so for an authentic feel crop to a square and pick a pixel size that leaves around 128 blocks across.
• It is forgiving of pixel size. Anything from 6 to 16 looks good on a typical phone photo.
• If you want the cooler, harder version of this look, NES has more blues and greens; if you want warmer still, try Commodore 64.