HTML Colors

In HTML, colors can be added by using the style attribute. You can specify a color name (eg, blue), a hexadecimal value (eg, #0000ff), or an RGB value (eg rgb(0,0,255)).

Syntax

Foreground Color

To add color to an HTML element, you use style="color:{color}", where {color} is the color value. For example:

This results in:

Background Color

To add a background color to an HTML element, you use style="background-color:{color}", where {color} is the color value. For example:

This results in:

Border Color

To add a colored border to an HTML element, you use style="border:{width} {color} {style}", where {width} is the width of the border, {color} is the color of the border, and {style} is the style of the border. For example:

This results in:

Color Names

The most common methods for specifying colors are by using the color name or the hexadecimal value. Although color names are easier to remember, the hexadecimal values and RGB values provides you with more color options.

Hexadecimal values are a combination of letters and numbers. The numbers go from 0 - 9 and the letters go from A to F. When using hexadecimal color values in your HTML/CSS, you preceed the value with a hash (#). Although hexadecimal values may look a little weird at first, you'll soon get used to them.

There are 16 color names (as specified in the HTML 4.0 specification). The chart below shows these color names and their corresponding hexadecimal value.

You can make up your own colors by simply entering any six digit hexadecimal value (preceeded by a hash). In the following example, we're using the same code as above. The only difference is that, instead of using "blue" as the value, we're using its hexadecimal equivalent (which is #0000ff):

This results in:

If we wanted to change to a deeper blue, we could change our hexadecimal value slightly, like this:

This results in:

Choosing Colors - The Easy Way

By using hexadecimal or RGB color values, you have a choice of over 16 million different colors. You can start with 000000 and increment by one value all the way up to FFFFFF. Each different value represents a slightly different color.

But don't worry - you won't need to remember every single hexadecimal color! The HTML color picker and color chart make it easy for you to choose colors for your website.