Color spaces

Reference2026-07-27

DAES stores colours in the DTCG object form — a colour space plus raw components — so a wide-gamut colour is not flattened to hex on the way in.

Supported spaces

All 14 can be stored, exported, and converted.

DTCG `colorSpace`	Components	Editable in the picker
`srgb`	r, g, b	✅
`srgb-linear`	r, g, b	—
`hsl`	h, s, l	✅
`hwb`	h, w, b	—
`lab`	L, a, b	—
`lch`	L, C, h	—
`oklab`	L, a, b	—
`oklch`	L, C, h	✅
`display-p3`	r, g, b	✅
`a98-rgb`	r, g, b	—
`prophoto-rgb`	r, g, b	—
`rec2020`	r, g, b	—
`xyz-d65`	X, Y, Z	—
`xyz-d50`	X, Y, Z	—

The four picker spaces have sliders. The other ten are entered as text and are preserved exactly.

Accepted input

Any CSS colour string that parses and resolves to one of the 14 spaces:

#3b82f6   #3b82f6ff   #38f
rgb(59 130 246)        rgba(59, 130, 246, 0.5)
hsl(217 91% 60%)       hwb(217 23% 4%)
lab(54% 20 -70)        lch(54% 73 285)
oklab(0.65 -0.02 -0.17)
oklch(0.65 0.19 255)
color(display-p3 0.2 0.5 0.9)
color(rec2020 0.2 0.5 0.9)
rebeccapurple

A string that parses into an unsupported space is rejected, not silently converted. This is intentional: a lossy conversion you did not ask for is worse than an error.

The stored object

{
  "colorSpace": "oklch",
  "components": [0.65, 0.19, 255],
  "alpha": 1,
  "hex": "#2f7ff0"
}

Field
`components`	Raw channel values in that space. A missing channel is the string `"none"`
`alpha`	`0`–`1`, always stored separately and never baked into `hex`
`hex`	A 6-digit sRGB fallback, always present, for tools that only read hex

Conversion to Figma

Figma paints are sRGB, 0–1 per channel. Applying a wide-gamut colour goes:

stored space → sRGB → gamut mapping → clamp 0–1 → Figma paint

Gamut mapping, not clipping. An out-of-sRGB P3 or OKLCH colour is nudged to the nearest in-gamut colour perceptually, instead of having each channel cut independently — which is what preserves the hue.

The stored token is unaffected: only the on-canvas rendering is mapped. Export still emits the original wide-gamut value.

alpha becomes the Figma paint’s opacity.

Display hex

The token tile shows:

Alpha	Format
`1`	6-digit — `#3b82f6`
below `1`	8-digit — `#3b82f680`

Shorthand #RGB and #RGBA input is expanded to full length.

Practical guidance

Situation	Recommendation
Web-only system	Stay in `srgb`. Simplest, and what most downstream tooling expects
Perceptual scales (lightness ramps)	Use `oklch`. Equal lightness steps actually look equal
Targeting modern displays	Use `display-p3` and accept sRGB gamut mapping on the Figma canvas
Working with print or wide-gamut assets	`prophoto-rgb` and `rec2020` store correctly, but the Figma preview will be gamut-mapped