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Working with Color on Your Webpage

16 Standard Web Colors:

  • There are the 16 standard color names that are recognized by most browsers. Colors may vary a bit depending on the browser you are using.
Name Sample
aqua  
black  
blue  
fuchsia  
gray  
green  
lime  
maroon  
navy  
olive  
purple  
red  
silver  
teal  
yellow  
white  

Hexadecimal Colors:

  • To create more complex colors, you will have to use a hexadecimal code.
  • There are 16.7 million different colors that can be creating using the RGB color system and the Hex numbering system.
  • Each of the 6 digits in the hexadecimal code is broken into 3 seperate groups...
    • #XXxxxx - Red Color Value
    • #xxXXxx - Green Color Value
    • #xxxxXX - Blue Color Value

     

  • Each digit is a value from 0 to F, in the hexadecimal system. The hexadecimal color system counts by 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F, with 0 being null value, and F being highest value.
  • So if the first two digits (red values) are full (FF) and the other four are null (00) the color will be red... and so on.
Hex Value
Color
#FF0000
RED
#00FF00
GREEN
#0000FF
BLUE
#00FFFF
CYAN
#FF00FF
MAGENTA
#FFFF00
YELLOW
#000000
BLACK
#FFFFFF
WHITE

 

Here is a pallete of 216 Hexadecimal colors: These are considered "browser safe" colors because they will look fairly right in all browsers and computer platforms:
  • These colors are distinguished by the fact that their hexadecimal codes consist of only the pairs 00, 33, 66, CC, and FF. From a color viewpoint, this means that from top to bottom in a given column in a block of 36 colors, the amount of blue increases in 20% increments, from left to right in a given row, the amount of green increases in 20% increments, from top to bottom in the whole chart, the amount of red in each block increases in 20% increments.

  • The codes to the left of each block of 36 colors show hexadecimal values for the red and green components of the color. The symbol "xx" for the green component means that you are to choose that number from the column in which your desired color lies. The blue component is chosen from the codes along the left edge of each row.

  • For example, the code for the color in block CC xx, column FF, and row 33 is CCFF00 (a light lime green).

Here are a list of other colors charts you can use to pick colors: