QGIS: Random Colors from Palette

If you are only trying to represent features are shapes and don’t need the color to represent anything, why not choose a color randomly from a palette for nice effect.

I did this in QGIS 3.16, but other versions are likely to be similar.

Steps:

Start by opening the layer properties:

Select the simple fill, then click on the equation box to the right of the fill color and select edit.

In the expression box enter the following:

array_get(
    array( 
        '222, 242, 200',
        '197, 218, 193',
        '188, 208, 199',
        '169, 178, 172',
        '137, 137, 128'
    ),
    rand(0,4)
)

Each color is represented as an RGB string, you could also use RGBA if you’d like to add transparency. We make an array from the RGB strings, then grab a random item from the array.

To pick colors I suggest checking out coolers.co to generate a palette like the one below.

Result

When you’re done you should have some like what is pictured below.