In CSS there are many ways to express a color value. The method chosen will likely depend on the color itself and whether or not there’s transparency.
Predefined Color Names
There are 140 color names predefined in HTML/CSS.
p {
color: red;
}
Hexadecimal Colors (HEX Codes)
p {
color: #ff0000; /* red */
}
Hexadecimal Colors With Transparency
As shown above, a hexadecimal color is specified with: #RRGGBB. To add transparency, add two additional digits between 00 and FF.
p {
color: #ff00007f; /* red with 0.5 opacity */
}
RGB Colors
An RGB color value is specified with the rgb() function, which has the following syntax: rgb(red, green, blue).
Each parameter (red, green, and blue) defines the intensity of the color and can be an integer between 0 and 255, or a percentage value (from 0% to 100%).
p {
color: rgb(255, 0, 0); /* red */
}
p {
color: rgb(100%, 0%, 0%); /* red */
}
RGBA Colors
An RGBA color value adds an alpha channel to the end of the rgb() function making it rgba(red, green, blue, alpha).
The alpha parameter is a number between 0.0 (fully transparent) and 1.0 (fully opaque).
p {
color: rgb(255, 0, 0, 0.5); /* red with 0.5 opacity */
}
p {
color: rgb(100%, 0%, 0%, 0.5); /* red with 0.5 opacity */
}
HSL Colors
The HSL color value is specified with the hsl() function, which has the following syntax: hsl(hue, saturation, lightness).
- Hue is a degree on the color wheel (from 0 to 360) – 0 (or 360) is red, 120 is green, 240 is blue
- Saturation is a percentage value – 0% means a shade of gray and 100% is the full color
- Lightness is also a percentage – 0% is black, 100% is white
p {
color: hsl(0, 100%, 50%); /* red */
}
p {
color: hsl(0, 100%, 75%); /* dark red */
}
HSLA Colors
The HSLA color value adds an alpha channel to the end of the hsl() function making it hsla(hue, saturation, lightness, alpha).
The alpha parameter is a number between 0.0 (fully transparent) and 1.0 (fully opaque).
p {
color: hsla(0, 100%, 50%, 0.5); /* red with 0.5 opacity */
}
We’d like to acknowledge that we learned a great deal of our coding from W3Schools and TutorialsPoint, borrowing heavily from their teaching process and excellent code examples. We highly recommend both sites to deepen your experience, and further your coding journey. We’re just hitting the basics here at 1SMARTchicken.
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CSS NOTES:
- The “inherit”, “initial” and “unset” keywords can be used with any CSS property to set its value
- In CSS there are many ways to express a color value in a property
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