Web colours

1. Websafe colours

Here's a table of the 216 "web safe" colours that work on all browser versions, with old SVGA monitors that can show only 256 colours. Though most users now have screens that can show "thousands of colours" or more, it's not a bad idea to stick to these colours on web pages, specially for text in small sizes. For maximum readability, if you choose a background colour with an RGB code that's shown in black text in this table, use a text colour whose RGB code appears in white - and vice versa. See also our page of pale background colours.

These colour names (also shown in the above table) will work in any browser, even very old ones:

Finally, some other commonly used colours. The top one in each pair is specified by colour name, the lower one by code number. The two should look identical. If they are different, you have a browser compatibility problem, and it will be best to avoid using that name...

There are 100-odd other colournames you can use, but if you're not sure what the colour name means, that defeats the purpose of using names - e.g. what colour is "gainsboro"? And, come to think of it, don't orchids (shown above as light purple) flower in many different colours? At least if you stick with the RGB code it will be consistent between browsers - though different computer screens will display slightly different shades of a specified colour.