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LCH Color Converter

Convert LCH to HEX and RGB — LAB in polar form, as CSS uses it.

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LCH

CSS 
The lch() value appears here

Quick Tool Overview

The LCH Color Converter works in CIELAB’s polar form — lightness, chroma and hue — converting to sRGB with proper CSS Color 4 gamut mapping instead of channel clipping, and saying when a colour cannot be displayed at all.

What it does
Converts LCH to HEX, RGB and HSL and back
You give it
Lightness, chroma and hue, or any colour
You get back
The sRGB colour, with gamut warnings
Best for
Even colour scales and perceptual adjustments
Color Tools Free, unlimited use No sign-up Runs in your browser

About the LCH Color Converter

LCH is CIELAB expressed in polar coordinates, which makes it far easier to work with. Instead of the abstract a and b axes you get lightness, chroma — how colourful it is — and hue as an angle, the three things a designer actually adjusts.

The advantage over HSL is that lightness means the same thing at every hue. In HSL, changing hue while holding lightness produces colours of wildly different brightness; in LCH it does not, which is what makes it the right space for building a colour scale with even steps.

The catch is gamut. LCH can describe colours far more saturated than a screen can display, so a chroma of 130 at most hues simply does not exist in sRGB. The converter flags this and maps the colour the way CSS Color 4 specifies — hold lightness and hue, reduce chroma until it fits — rather than clipping the channels and shifting the hue.

Key features of the LCH Color Converter

Lightness that means something

Unlike HSL, changing hue at a fixed lightness keeps the brightness — which is what makes an even scale possible.

Real gamut mapping

Hold lightness and hue, reduce chroma until it fits, exactly as CSS Color 4 specifies. Clipping instead would shift the hue.

Out-of-gamut flagged

Most of LCH is not displayable. The tool tells you when you have left sRGB rather than silently substituting.

Both directions

Paste a HEX code to read its LCH components, or build a colour from the sliders.

CSS-ready output

The lch() value with a HEX fallback for older browsers.

How to use the LCH Color Converter

  1. 1

    Set lightness, chroma and hue

    Drag the sliders or paste an lch() string.

  2. 2

    Read the sRGB colour

    HEX, RGB and HSL are produced together, with a live swatch.

  3. 3

    Watch the gamut warning

    If the colour cannot exist on screen, the tool says so and shows the mapped version.

  4. 4

    Convert the other way

    Paste a HEX code to see its LCH components.

Frequently asked questions

The same polar idea over a different space: LCH sits on CIELAB, OKLCH on OKLab. OKLCH behaves better through blue and purple, so it is the one to reach for when building scales or gradients. LCH remains useful where CIELAB is the reference.

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