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Colour Mood Boards

Submit a swatch or a custom hex to paint the team's mood in colour.

Last updated April 2026

Colour is the most abstract input type. Each participant picks a colour - either from a curated palette or by entering a hex value - that captures how they're feeling. The result is a wash of swatches that reads as a group mood at a glance.

How Participants Submit

The submission area shows two options:

  • A preset palette of twelve mood-evocative swatches with friendly names like Sunshine, Coral, Mint, Cobalt, Pine. Tap one to submit.
  • A custom hex input with a live preview swatch. Type or paste a six-digit hex (the leading # is optional) and submit.

Hex values are validated server-side. Anything outside #rrggbb is rejected with a clear message. The server normalises every value to lowercase so identical colours stack consistently on the tile renderer.

The Tile Layout

Tiles render as solid-fill squares in a uniform grid: four columns on mobile, six on tablet, eight on desktop, 8px gap. The hex value appears in the corner of each tile so anyone curious about the exact shade can read it. The optional caption shows on hover as an overlay so the surface stays clean.

Identical swatches stack into a single tile with a count badge, the same as Emoji. The visual makes consensus colours obvious without needing to read names.

When To Use Colour

Colour works best when:

  • The prompt is feelings-first. "What colour is your week?" produces honest, non-verbal answers.
  • The team is comfortable with abstraction. People who want to describe their mood in words will be frustrated by the constraint.
  • You want a result that's visually striking enough to keep around. A grid of colours photographs well for a team retrospective wall.

Tips For Hosts

  • The preset palette is opinionated by design. If you want a specific brand palette, set the board's Theme Colour to anchor the page tint, then let participants pick freely.
  • Pair Colour with comments enabled. Most of the value is in the "why this colour?" conversation that follows.
  • Anonymous names work especially well here. The colour speaks for itself; the participant doesn't need to defend it.

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