Add white to a color and you get a tint. That is the whole definition. Pink is a tint of red. Sky blue is a tint of blue. Pastel anything is a tint of something more saturated.

The confusion starts because people use tint and shade interchangeably in casual speech. In color theory they are opposites. Shade adds black. Tone adds gray. Tint adds white. Three different operations, three different results. A designer working in HSL can create a tint by raising the lightness value. A painter mixes in white pigment.

Tints in design systems

• Create hover states lighter than the base color
• Build background colors that stay in the same hue family
• Suggest airiness, softness, or approachability
• Establish visual hierarchy without changing hue

Many design systems generate a tint scale from a single base color, typically ten steps from near-white to near-black. Material Design and Apple's Human Interface Guidelines both rely on tint scales. The advantage is consistency. Every light blue in the system comes from the same recipe. The disadvantage is monotony if the scale is used without variation. Tints work best when paired with a strong anchor color somewhere in the composition.