Help:Color

Color on computer screens is made up of 3 "primary" colors: red, green and blue.
You will often see this referred to as "RGB." These colors are "additive": zero of all three gives black, while maximum of all three makes white.

Colors by number

Computers work with powers of two. The relevant vocabulary for describing colors uses "hexadecimal", which is base sixteen. Hexadecimal numbers are how geeks count up to 15 without using more than one digit. In hexadecimal, 0-15 is counted 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F.

• Using one hex digit for each of the three base colors, the range for each is 0 to 15 (16 or 2⁴ possibilities), for a total of 16³, or 4,096 possible values.
• Using two hex digits for each color, the range for each is 0 to 255 (256 or 2⁸ possibilities). This yields a total of 256³, or 16,777,216 values;
  Each base color (red, green, and blue) can have a value in one of these ranges.

In HTML, hexadecimal color codes are preceded by "#". Then:

• Using the 0-15 method, a RGB color is represented as #000 for black, through #FFF for white.

• In the 0-255 method, black is #000000 and white is #FFFFFF.

Note that equal amounts of red, green and blue produce various shades of gray (for example #A2A2A2). Pure reds are of the form #XX0000, (where X is one of the valid hexidecimal digits 0-F), pure greens are #00XX00, and pure blue shades are #0000XX. Any color combination can be created using any number from 00 to FF in each of the three positions.

Colors by name

As with many tricks and tools on computers, copying something you like is often the quickest way to get there. There are also palettes of named colors.

Color name	Hexadecimal		Color name	Hexadecimal		Color name	Hexadecimal		Color name	Hexadecimal
	Background	Text		Background	Text		Background	Text		Background	Text
aqua	#00FFFF	Sample text on black	black	#000000	Sample text	blue	#0000FF	Sample text	fuchsia	#FF00FF	Sample text
gray	#808080	Sample text	green	#008000	Sample text	lime	#00FF00	Sample text on black	maroon	#800000	Sample text
navy	#000080	Sample text	olive	#808000	Sample text	purple	#800080	Sample text	red	#FF0000	Sample text
silver	#C0C0C0	Sample text on black	teal	#008080	Sample text	white	#FFFFFF	Sample text on black	yellow	#FFFF00	Sample text on black

If you're really lazy then a list of color templates can be found here.

There is another palette of named colors which might or might not work with various web browsers.

Color picker

There are plenty of hex color pickers online.

• W3school's HTML color picker
• Color picker

Text color coding

Using CSS color attribute: <span style="color:</nowiki>''hex triplet or colour name''<nowiki>">text</span>

<span style="color:red">red writing</span>

red writing

<p style="color:#0F0">green writing</p>

green writing

<span style="color:#0000FF">blue writing</span>

blue writing

This has the advantage that other attributes can be included in the same "span" tag.

Obsolete

The use of the <font color> </font> HTML tags can still be used but deprecated. It is not recommended to use <font color> as the feature can be removed at any time.

<font color="red">RED TEXT</font>

RED TEXT

<font color="#0F0">GREEN TEXT</font>

GREEN TEXT

<font color="#0000FF">BLUE TEXT</font>

BLUE TEXT

Other use of colors

Colors can also be defined in other html tags, such as table tags. BGCOLOR="#abcxyz" will set the background color of a table, row, or cell when used inside the appropriate tag. Wiki table colors can also be defined using the "style" attribute.

Accessibility

Please be aware that some readers with poor eyesight cannot read text with a low color contrast. It is recommended to use a tool such as Are my colors accessible? to check whether people can actually read the text.

This text is hard to read isn't it. Imagine if you had you read all the articles like this. It wouldn't be fun at all.

This text is much better to read. You can easily see the words.

External links

• HTML color codes — to make your own colors.