TLDR
Everything recolors through one color wheel — furniture, walls, floors, ceilings and every eye, hair and skin color in the Paramaker. The wheel shows a color code you can carry between items, saved swatches keep a whole set of zone colors, and 30 color filters (six of them color-blindness presets) sit in Settings → Accessibility → Effects. The one officially acknowledged failure is creating new swatches: named in patch 0.1.5's known issues and not mentioned since.
Coverage
What the color wheel recolors
The studio's official Early Access feature cards list "color wheel for everything" as a day-one feature — and that is close to literally true. Four surfaces matter:
Furniture and objects
Catalogue items ship with preset swatches, but each preset is only a starting point: open the color panel on any item and the full wheel takes over. The studio demonstrated exactly this on kitchen furniture in its November 2019 color wheel video.
Walls, floors and ceilings
Structure surfaces get the same treatment, per the studio's own roadmap entry on wall, floor and ceiling texture and color customization (March 2022). Wall paint, floor patterns and ceiling finishes open the same color menu as furniture.
Eyes, hair and skin in the Paramaker
Character colors use the same wheel with one upgrade the build menu does not have: a field that accepts typed hex codes for an exact shade. Presets exist for speed; the wheel is for matching a reference.
Clothing and patterns
Outfits recolor per clothing item, and patterned pieces expose their pattern colors as separate fills — the same zone logic, one layer up. Creating new swatches for clothes works the same way as for furniture.
Color zones
One item, several paintable color zones
A recolorable item is not one bucket of paint. Both the Paramaker and build mode split items into color zones — a main color plus accents — and each zone takes its own color from the wheel.
Paramaker skin: four zones
Skin color splits into Base, Highlights, Shadows and Blush — all four adjustable on every Para. Eyes and hair carry their own region sets with a main color plus accents.
Build mode items: zone count varies
How many zones an object has depends on the item — a sofa might expose body, cushions and legs, a counter separates worktop from cabinet. The official mod editor exposes the number per item as a "Swatch Color Zone Count", so zones are a per-asset decision, not a global setting.
Materials ride along with zones
On some items a zone also offers material choices in the style creation menu — a dropdown that switches a surface between wood, metal or plastic finishes. The chosen material is remembered by the swatch you save.
A swatch remembers the whole set
One saved swatch stores every zone's color (plus pattern or material where offered), which makes custom swatches the closest thing Paralives has to a saved palette.
Exact shades
Hex codes: carry one exact shade through a house
Paralives speaks hex. The Paramaker accepts typed hex codes outright, and in build mode the wheel shows the code of the shade you are on — so a color travels between items as text instead of by eye.
- 1
Open the color wheel on the item whose shade you want to reuse, and set the picker exactly on the target shade.
- 2
Copy the color code shown with the wheel — our build tips guide documents the keystrokes on frames.
- 3
Open the color panel on the next item — the same wood tone, the same metal — and paste the code into its code box.
- 4
For whole objects, the pipette (I) copies a swatch straight off something you already placed, and Alt + left-click (pipette selected) transfers a wall or floor swatch onto any recolorable item.
- 5
To keep a shade long-term, save it as a custom swatch: right-click a swatch to create, edit, duplicate or delete.
The color menu has two layouts: the selection-method toggle in its top right corner switches between two types of color wheels. Pick whichever you steer better — the code box behaves the same in both.
Color filters
Color filters: a rendering layer, not a painting tool
Filters change how the screen renders the game, never the colors you painted. They live in two places:
Settings → Accessibility → Effects → Color Filter is the system-wide list: 30 presets as of 0.1.8b — six Color Blindness accessibility modes, then creative looks from Black and White, Sepia and Moonlight to Amstagram, Seventies Magazine and Town Map.
Photo mode applies the same idea per shot: filter presets join stickers, decorative frames and special effects, so a screenshot can carry a look your game normally does not. Intensity is adjustable per filter.
All 30 options (as of 0.1.8b, wiki-sourced, labels as in-game):
- Default
- Color Blindness 1
- Color Blindness 2
- Color Blindness 3
- Color Blindness 4
- Color Blindness 5
- Color Blindness 6
- Black and White
- Fisheye
- Alternate Reality
- Boost Fade
- Amstagram
- Autumn
- Cinematic Lady Bird
- Cinematic Mexico
- Expired 69
- Faded Look
- Faded Print
- Seventies Magazine
- Warm Vintage
- Solarized
- Green Detector
- Sepia
- Retro Fade
- Moonlight
- Dream
- Brownish
- Memories
- Lens Dirt
- Town Map
Color wheel FAQ
- Where is the color wheel in Paralives?
- On anything recolorable. In build mode, select an object — or a wall, floor or ceiling finish — and open its color panel; the wheel replaces the preset swatches. In the Paramaker, the + button next to a color opens the full wheel for eyes, hair, skin and clothing. There is no separate color-wheel mode to launch.
- Why can't I create a new swatch?
- That is the one color failure the studio has acknowledged: patch 0.1.5's known-issues list names players "unable to create new swatches for clothes and assets". The patch notes have not mentioned it since — silence is not a fix, so it stays on our known-issues tracker. Sensible stops: retest on a scratch save with external mods disabled, then report it through the official bug channels so your hardware details go with it.
- The color wheel is not showing — what do I check?
- No official source documents the wheel failing to open as its own bug, so this is a diagnostics order, not a known-cause list: confirm an item or color zone is actually selected (the wheel opens per item and per zone), check that no other window is swallowing the click, make sure your key bindings were not rebound in Settings, test with external mods disabled, and verify the game files from Steam. If it survives all that, report it as a bug — that is the honest state of this one.
- How do I use a hex color code?
- In the Paramaker the color wheel accepts typed hex codes — that field is documented on the wiki's Paramaker page. In build mode, copy the code shown with the wheel on one item and paste it into the code box on another; the keystrokes are frame-documented in our build tips guide. Matching one wood tone through a whole house is the classic use.
- Can I save a color palette?
- Per item, yes. Create a custom swatch from the swatch strip and it stores every color zone of that item; right-click it later to edit, duplicate or delete. A global palette that carries colors across different items is not documented anywhere — to move a shade, copy the code or use the pipette.
- What are Paralives color filters and where do I find them?
- A rendering layer, not a painting tool. The full 30-option list sits in Settings → Accessibility → Effects → Color Filter — six Color Blindness presets plus creative looks like Black and White, Sepia, Moonlight and Town Map. Photo mode applies filter presets per screenshot, with intensity control. Nothing a filter changes affects the colors you actually painted.
- Is the color wheel part of the base game?
- Yes — no cheat, no purchase, no mod. The studio's official Early Access feature cards list "color wheel for everything" among day-one features, and every recolor option above ships in the standard menus. Mods can add content on top, but the wheel itself is vanilla.
What nobody has documented yet
Competing guides guess at these; we list them instead. As of 0.1.8b, none of the following has an official or wiki source:
- Typed hex input in build mode. The Paramaker accepts typed codes; build mode's copy-and-paste flow into the code box is frame-documented, but no source shows the build-mode menu accepting typed input.
- A global saved palette. Custom swatches attach to the item you create them on; no source documents a cross-item palette, a color history or an export.
- Whether the 0.1.5 swatch-creation failure is fixed. The patch notes stopped mentioning it after 0.1.5, and silence is not a fix — it remains on the tracker as open.
- "Color wheel not showing" as a distinct, documented bug. No official post or wiki page records the wheel failing to open as its own issue; the FAQ checks above are generic diagnostics, not known causes.
- The pipette's exact reach. The I-key pipette is documented as a shortcut and community guides use it to copy swatches between items, but whether it transfers patterns or only colors is not officially specified.
Related guides
Build mode tips
The fifteen-habit workflow guide — including the frame-documented hex copy-and-paste and swatch editing this page summarizes.
Copy rooms, items and colors
Every duplication route: the pipette, hex matching, item duplicates and the lot library.
Paramaker appearance
Body presets, the height slider, and the color wheel's role in eyes, hair and skin.
Best settings
The settings menu panel by panel — including the Accessibility tab's full color filter list.
Known issues tracker
Every studio-acknowledged bug — swatch creation included — with per-issue status.
Build hacks
Advanced build techniques, including the wall-paint clone this page's swatch shortcuts relate to.