Square Color Scheme
A square color scheme uses four colors spaced evenly around the color wheel, each 90 degrees from the next so they form a perfect square. It's a full-spectrum, energetic palette that still holds together because the four hues are equally distant from one another.
A square color scheme uses four hues spaced 90 degrees apart on the color wheel. It's bold and full of character, yet a touch more balanced than a rectangle because the spacing is perfectly even — just let one color lead. Build one below in real paint.
Drag the base dot around the wheel — the scheme follows the rule. Each color snaps to the nearest real paint. Tap a swatch to copy its hex.
This is the square scheme drawn on the wheel — drag the base dot to explore, then open any result as an editable palette in real paint.
Drop a square on the color wheel: the four corners are your colors (for example a red, a yellow-green, a cyan and a violet). Because all four are at full strength, pick one to dominate the room and let the other three play as accents — and vary their saturation and lightness so the palette feels layered rather than loud. It works best in lively, playful spaces where you want plenty of contrast without anything overpowering.
Tap any example to open it as an editable palette, or try it on your own photo in the visualizer.
Prefer to start from a color? See ready-made combinations for any base.
Our color tools run on our own catalogue of 26,000+ real paint colors across 16 brands — Benjamin Moore, Sherwin-Williams, Behr, Dulux, RAL and more — with the color math (HSL and CIELAB matching) computed in-house, not scraped from summaries. Every color you pick maps to a real, buyable paint with its code, so what you see here you can actually take to the store. We review and update these tools and their data regularly.
Created by Denis Kataev, founder of DSGN.HOUSE — a software engineer and digital entrepreneur building professional color-design tools for everyone.
What is a square color scheme?+
Four hues evenly spaced around the color wheel, each 90 degrees apart, so they form a square. It's a bold, full-spectrum palette that stays balanced because every color is equally distant from its neighbors.
How is a square scheme different from tetradic?+
Both use four colors, but a square spaces them perfectly evenly at 90 degrees, while a tetradic (rectangle) scheme uses two pairs at uneven gaps. The even spacing makes a square feel a little more balanced and harder to dominate by any one hue.
How many colors does it use and how do I use them in a room?+
Four. Follow the 60-30-10 rule: let one color cover about 60 percent of the space, a second take 30 percent, and split the last 10 percent between the remaining two as accents. That keeps four strong hues from competing.
Are these real paint colors?+
Yes. Every color in your square palette is matched to a real, buyable paint across 16 brands, with the exact name and code so you can order or color-match it at the store.