I noticed this week that Asana has changed the available project colors to much lighter pastels. We use project colors to indicate a certain project attribute. It’s helpful to be able to identify this attribute at a glance. Since the colors have been changed, I can no longer tell which project has which attribute in this way and will need to mentally re-map this relationship, which is inconvenient.
I played around with the “colorblind mode” to see if I could ameliorate this, but it seems like the project color is ignoring that toggle; it just changes whether the chosen icon displays as black or white. See attached screenshot:
I have noticed this same problem. It seems to be related to the change that now shows a project’s icon in the sidebar list of projects or starred projects. I love that I can now see the project’s icon in the sidebar, but the muted colors not respecting the colorblind friendly mode is making it hard to read and see the differences between my starred projects. I need the more vivid colors.
Asana, this recent color palette change is a real step backward.
For years, your project colors did exactly what they needed to do. They told me, at a glance, which project was which. That is not decoration. In a project management tool, color is a functional cue, and a lot of teams have built real workflows around it.
Last week’s sidebar redesign quietly changed all of that. Project colors are now muted pastels that are hard to tell apart, especially in a sidebar full of starred projects. That is frustrating on its own, but the bigger problem is that the Color Blind Friendly Mode toggle no longer affects project colors. It only changes whether the project icon shows as black or white. The one workaround that gave us usable contrast no longer works.
When the original palette change rolled out in July 2025, the response was that there are no plans to revert. I understand the goal of a more cohesive brand experience, but cohesion at the cost of usability is not a fair trade for the people working in the product every day. Multiply a few extra seconds of scanning and re-mapping across every team member, every project, every day, and the cost adds up quickly.
Accessibility settings exist for a reason. When they stop working, that is a regression, not a refresh. Please either restore more saturated, distinguishable project colors, or at minimum fix the Color Blind Friendly Mode toggle so it actually does what its name says. A lot of us would really appreciate it.
