color

Summary

The color property sets the foreground color of an element's text content, and its decorations. It doesn't affect any other characteristic of the element; it should really be called text-color and would have been named so, save for historical reasons and its appearance in CSS Level 1. 

Note that the color value must be a uniform color, which may include a transparency value from CSS3 onwards. It can't be a <gradient> which is an <image> in CSS.

Syntax

/* A CSS Level 1 color */
color: red;

/* The only color added in CSS Level 2 (Revision 1) */
color: orange;

/* CSS Level 3 color, sometimes called a SVG or X11 color */
color: antiquewhite;

/* The color 'lime' with the 3-character dash notation */
color: #0f0;

/* The color 'lime' with the 6-character dash notation */
color: #00ff00;

/* A color using the available functional notations */
color: rgba( 34, 12, 64, 0.3);

/* Use the color of this element's direct ancestor */
color: currentcolor;

color: inherit;

Values

<color>

Is a <color> value giving the color of the textual elements of the element.

Formal syntax

<color>
where 
<color> = <rgb()> | <rgba()> | <hsl()> | <hsla()> | <hex-color> | <named-color> | currentcolor | <deprecated-system-color>
where 
<rgb()> = rgb( <percentage>{3} [ / <alpha-value> ]? ) | rgb( <number>{3} [ / <alpha-value> ]? ) | rgb( <percentage>#{3} , <alpha-value>? ) | rgb( <number>#{3} , <alpha-value>? )
<rgba()> = rgba( <percentage>{3} [ / <alpha-value> ]? ) | rgba( <number>{3} [ / <alpha-value> ]? ) | rgba( <percentage>#{3} , <alpha-value>? ) | rgba( <number>#{3} , <alpha-value>? )
<hsl()> = hsl( <hue> <percentage> <percentage> [ / <alpha-value> ]? ) | hsl( <hue>, <percentage>, <percentage>, <alpha-value>? )
<hsla()> = hsla( <hue> <percentage> <percentage> [ / <alpha-value> ]? ) | hsla( <hue>, <percentage>, <percentage>, <alpha-value>? )
where 
<alpha-value> = <number> | <percentage>
<hue> = <number> | <angle>

Examples

The following are all ways to make the element's text red:

element { color: red }
element { color: #f00 }
element { color: #ff0000 }
element { color: rgb(255,0,0) }
element { color: rgb(100%, 0%, 0%) }
element { color: hsl(0, 100%, 50%) }

/* 50% translucent */
element { color: rgba(255, 0, 0, 0.5) } 
element { color: hsla(0, 100%, 50%, 0.5) }

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• The <color> data type