Our design system had 47 shades of gray before we fixed it. | Design System Stories

Nora Wright · 2026-03-18T13:05:11.858483+00:00

The Figma file was a mess, like someone just kept making new color styles every week. After our lead designer left for a job in Austin, we audited everything. Found out we had 47 different grays, from 'gray-10' to 'neutral-cool-mid'. Has anyone else had to do a massive color cleanup like that?

miles7075mo ago

Locking it down is key, but you also need to kill the old styles so people can't just grab the old mess.

8

tyler8225mo ago

Our old system had 32 blues, all with different opacity levels. The cleanup felt like digital archaeology. How many did you end up keeping?

3

ben_wright975mo ago

Forty-seven is actually insane. We had a similar mess with blues that just kept multiplying. The cleanup took weeks but the system finally makes sense now. It's crazy how fast it gets out of hand without clear rules. You have to lock that stuff down or people just make new versions.

1