HTML Colors

Color Values

Colors are defined using a hexadecimal notation for the combination of red, green, and blue color values (RGB). The lowest value that can be given to one light source is 0 (hex #00). The highest value is 255 (hex #FF). This table shows the result of combining red, green, and blue:

Color HEX		Color RGB
#000000	rgb(0,0,0)
#FF0000	rgb(255,0,0)
#00FF00	rgb(0,255,0)
#0000FF	rgb(0,0,255)
#FFFF00	rgb(255,255,0)
#00FFFF	rgb(0,255,255)
#FF00FF	rgb(255,0,255)
#C0C0C0	rgb(192,192,192)
#FFFFFF	rgb(255,255,255)

Color Names

A collection of color names is supported by most browsers. To view a table of color names that are supported by most browsers visit this web page:

http://profdevtrain.austincc.edu/html/color_names.htm

Note: Only 16 color names are supported by the W3C HTML 4.0 standard (aqua, black, blue, fuchsia, gray, green, lime, maroon, navy, olive, purple, red, silver, teal, white, and yellow). For all other colors you should use the Color HEX value.

Color HEX	Color Name
#F0F8FF	AliceBlue
#FAEBD7	AntiqueWhite
#7FFFD4	Aquamarine
#000000	Black
#0000FF	Blue
#8A2BE2	BlueViolet
#A52A2A	Brown

Web Safe Colors

A few years ago, when most computers supported only 256 different colors, a list of 216 Web Safe Colors was suggested as a Web standard. The reason for this was that the Microsoft and Mac operating system used 40 different "reserved" fixed system colors (about 20 each). This 216 cross platform web safe color palette was originally created to ensure that all computers would display all colors correctly when running a 256 color palette. 

16 Million Different Colors

The combination of Red, Green and Blue values from 0 to 255 gives a total of more than 16 million different colors to play with (256 x 256 x 256). Most modern monitors are capable of displaying at least 16,384 different colors.