Before building Color Mixer, we checked an existing color mixer's blend-mode options and compared them against what the CSS spec says the browser itself actually does.
Three modes, and none of them match the browser default
The tool we checked offers "RGB Average," "Additive (Light)," and "Subtractive (Pigment)" — three legitimate ways to think about mixing colors. But CSS's own color-mix() function, supported in every major browser since 2023, defaults to a fourth approach entirely: OKLab. If none of a tool's modes match what color-mix(in oklab, red, green) actually renders, its results won't match what you'd get writing the CSS directly.
We measured the "muddy" complaint
Mixing pure red and pure green 50/50 with plain RGB averaging produces #808000 — a flat olive. We measured its OKLCH chroma (a real number for how vivid a color is): 0.126. Red and green individually measure 0.258 and 0.295. The RGB average isn't just subjectively "duller" — it's measurably lost roughly half its vividness. Mixing the same two colors in OKLab space instead gives a visibly richer #d0a800, with a chroma of 0.153.
Seeing the receipts
Rather than pick one mixing method and call it done, this tool shows both results side by side, each labeled with its own chroma value — so the difference is something you can verify yourself, not just take our word for.
