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Why Colour Accessibility Belongs in Your Design Toolkit

Colour is one of the most powerful tools in a board game designer’s arsenal. It draws the eye, groups information and sets the mood. But for roughly 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women, colour vision deficiency turns that tool into a barrier. If your game relies on red versus green cubes, or a blue card that looks identical to a purple one, you are excluding a significant chunk of your potential players. The good news is that accessible colour choices rarely make a game less beautiful. They force you to be a better visual communicator, and that benefits everyone at the table.

Know Your Problematic Pairings

Most colour blindness is red-green (deuteranopia and protanopia), followed by blue-yellow (tritanopia). That means certain pairings are almost guaranteed to cause confusion. Avoid using these as the sole difference between two pieces of information:

• Red and green – the classic trap. Think player tokens, health tracks or resource markers.
• Green and brown – common in nature-themed games, but they collapse into muddy sameness.
• Blue and purple – especially dark shades, which many people with tritanopia cannot separate.
• Light green and yellow – bright and cheerful, but nearly identical for some viewers.
• Red and orange – adjacent hues that blur together under poor lighting.

Remember that lighting changes everything. A colour pairing that works under your studio lamp may fail in a dim pub or a bright convention hall. Always test in multiple environments.

Test Contrast Like You Mean It

Contrast is not just about text. Any icon, pip, border or token face needs enough luminance difference to be readable. A good rule of thumb is to aim for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for small elements and 3:1 for large ones. You can check this with any free online contrast checker, but for physical components you need to go further.

• Print a greyscale version of your board, cards and tokens. If information disappears, your contrast is too low.
• Use a colour blindness simulator on photographs of your prototype. Simulate deuteranopia, protanopia and tritanopia separately.
• Do the squint test – blur your eyes. Can you still tell the difference between the red and green areas? If not, neither can many players.
• Check under warm and cool lighting – incandescent bulbs flatten blues, while LEDs can make yellows glow.

Contrast is your first line of defence, but it is not enough on its own. Two colours can have high contrast yet still be confused because of hue.

Add Symbols, Patterns and Textures

The most robust solution is redundant coding: never rely on colour alone. Give every colour-coded element a second, non-colour cue. This is where your inner illustrator and maker can shine.

• Symbols and icons – a red circle and a green triangle are instantly distinguishable. Use distinct silhouettes for player pieces, resource types or card categories.
• Patterns – stripes, dots, crosshatching or chevrons on tokens and board spaces. These work beautifully on flat components.
• Textures – embossing, debossing, or different finishes (gloss versus matte) on miniatures, tiles or cards. Even a subtle linen finish can create a tactile difference.
• Shape coding on cards – instead of colour-coding factions, use a unique border shape or corner cut. A diamond corner reads at a glance.
• Line styles on maps – dashed, dotted or solid paths for different routes or regions.

Patterns and textures also add visual richness. A board with subtle hatching feels more crafted than a flat wash of colour.

Reworking Your Palette: Practical Examples

Suppose you have a game with four player colours: red, green, blue and yellow. Instead of relying on those hues, assign each player a shape: red circles, green triangles, blue squares, yellow hexagons. The colour remains for flavour, but the shape carries the information. For a resource-management game, replace coloured cubes with tokens that have different embossed icons – a leaf, a coin, a drop. On a card game, use a coloured border plus a large symbol in the corner and a unique pattern across the card back. If you are designing a dungeon crawler, use different base shapes for enemy miniatures (round, square, hexagonal) and paint them with high-contrast patterns. You can keep your palette vibrant; just make sure every colour-coded element has a backup plan.

Playtest with Colour-Blind Players (and Iterate)

Simulators are a starting point, not a substitute for real people. Recruit colour-blind playtesters – local gaming groups, friends, or online communities are often happy to help. Ask specific questions: “Can you tell which token belongs to which player?” “Is this card’s type clear without reading the text?” Watch where their eyes hesitate. Then make changes and test again. Remember that manufacturing tolerances can shift colours slightly, so build in a margin of safety. Accessible colour design is not about dulling your game; it is about making every choice legible and every player welcome. Your illustrations will still sing, your boards will still glow, and everyone at the table will finally see the same game.