Ember – Redshift safe color palettes

Most color palettes collapse if you've got a strong redshift/nightshift color filter actively suppressing green and blue channels. I made one that doesn't.Ember has terminal, chart, heatmap, and UI palettes designed and tested to be as distinguishable as possible under both the redshift & non-redshift condition... so no more duplicate color appearances (or worse yet, disappearing colors!).

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FL score

62

out of 100

Verdict

VALIDATE

medium confidence

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A color palette library optimized for readability when blue light filters are active, solving a real but niche accessibility problem.

The pain

Users with redshift/nightshift enabled experience color collision, colors become indistinguishable or vanish entirely in terminal UIs, data visualizations, and dashboards. This breaks usability for anyone who uses these filters regularly (accessibility need + night workers + health-conscious users).

The gap

Existing color palettes are designed for standard RGB displays. No mainstream design tool or palette library accounts for the perceptual shift caused by blue-channel suppression. Designers either ignore the problem or users manually adjust their filters.

Build angle

Start by validating actual user demand through: (1) surveying terminal/dev tool communities about redshift pain points, (2) testing with accessibility-focused organizations, (3) measuring adoption if released as free open-source palettes. If demand exists, build a paid tier offering custom palette generation + testing tools. If not, the idea remains a clever one-off solution.

Strengths

  • Solves a real, reproducible technical problem with measurable outcomes
  • Low barrier to entry, can be released free to build audience first
  • Appeals to multiple segments: developers (terminal), data analysts (charts), accessibility teams, night shift workers
  • Founder has already done the hard work (design + testing)

Risks

  • Market size unknown, redshift/nightshift adoption varies; may only affect 5-15% of users seriously
  • Low switching cost, users can solve this themselves by adjusting filter settings or using existing palettes with tweaks
  • Monetization unclear, hard to charge for color palettes when free alternatives exist
  • Distribution challenge, color palettes have no natural distribution channel; requires active promotion to designers/developers
  • One-time purchase problem, once someone buys/downloads, they don't need it again

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