Color & Palettes for Pixel Art Lesson 1 of 4
Why limited palettes
Fewer, deliberate colors read as more cohesive — and are faster to work with.
Great game art usually uses a small, deliberate palette — often 8 to 32 colors for a whole scene. A limited palette forces cohesion: every color relates to the others instead of clashing. It is also faster to work with and reads more clearly at small sizes.
This is partly a legacy of old hardware (which could only show a handful of colors at once), but artists keep the constraint on purpose because it produces harmony. A shared palette is what makes a character, a prop, and a background feel like they belong in the same world.
Tip Reuse colors across objects instead of adding a fresh shade for every new thing. If a rock and a wall can share the same greys, let them — it ties the scene together.
Quick check
A limited palette mainly helps because it: