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CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a language for describing the rendering
of HTML and XML documents on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. It uses
color-related properties and values to color the text, backgrounds,
borders, and other parts of elements in a document. This specification
describes color values and properties for foreground color and group
opacity. These include properties and values from CSS level 2 and new
values.
Status of This Document
This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at https://www.w3.org/TR/.
This document was published by the CSS Working Group as a Recommendation using the Recommendation track.
A W3C Recommendation is a specification that, after extensive consensus-building, is endorsed by W3C and its Members, and has commitments from Working Group members to royalty-free licensing for implementations.
W3C recommends the wide deployment of this specification as a standard for the Web.
This document was produced by a group operating under the W3C Patent Policy. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in
connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes
instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual
knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential
Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section
6 of the W3C Patent Policy.
CSS beyond level 2 is a set of modules, divided up to allow the
specifications to develop incrementally, along with their implementations.
This specification is one of those modules.
This module describes CSS properties which allow authors to specify the
foreground color and opacity of an element. This module also describes in
detail the CSS <color> value type.
It not only defines the color-related properties and values that already
exist in CSS1 and CSS2, but also defines new
properties and values.
The specification is the result of the merging of relevant parts of the
following Recommendations and Working Drafts, and the addition of some new
features.
User Interface for CSS3 (16 February 2000) [CSS-UI-3]
2. Dependencies
Additional terminology is defined in the Definitions
section of [CSS21]. Examples of
document source code and fragments are given in XML [XML10] or HTML [HTML401] syntax.
The computed value for basic color keywords, RGB hex values and
extended color keywords is the equivalent triplet of numerical RGB
values, e.g. six digit hex value or rgb(...)
functional value, with an alpha value of 1.
The computed value of the keyword ‘transparent’ is the quadruplet of
all zero numerical RGBA values, e.g. rgba(0,0,0,0).
For all other values, the computed value is the specified value.
This property describes the foreground color of an element's text
content. In addition it is used to provide a potential indirect value (currentColor)
for any other properties that accept color values. If the ‘currentColor’ keyword is set on the
‘color’ property
itself, it is treated as ‘color: inherit’.
There are different ways to specify lime green:
Example(s):
em { color: lime } /* color keyword */
em { color: rgb(0,255,0) } /* RGB range 0-255 */
Opacity can be thought of as a postprocessing operation. Conceptually,
after the element (including its descendants) is rendered into an RGBA
offscreen image, the opacity setting specifies how to blend the offscreen
rendering into the current composite rendering. See simple alpha compositing for details.
Name:
opacity
Value:
<alphavalue> | inherit
Initial:
1
Applies to:
all elements
Inherited:
no
Percentages:
N/A
Computed value:
The same as the specified value after clipping the
<alphavalue> to the range [0.0,1.0].
<alphavalue>
Syntactically a <number>. The uniform opacity setting to be
applied across an entire object. Any values outside the range 0.0 (fully
transparent) to 1.0 (fully opaque) will be clamped to this range. If the
object has children, then the effect is as if the children were blended
against the current background using a mask where the value of each pixel
of the mask is <alphavalue>. For SVG, ‘has children’ is
equivalent to being a container element [SVG11].
Since an element with opacity less than 1 is composited from a single
offscreen image, content outside of it cannot be layered in z-order
between pieces of content inside of it. For the same reason,
implementations must create a new stacking context for any element with
opacity less than 1. If an element with opacity less than 1 is not
positioned, then it is painted on the same layer, within its parent
stacking context, as positioned elements with stack level 0. If an element
with opacity less than 1 is positioned, the ‘z-index’ property applies as described in [CSS21], except that if the used
value is ‘auto’ then the element behaves
exactly as if it were ‘0’. See section 9.9 and
Appendix E of [CSS21] for more information on
stacking contexts. The rules in this paragraph do not apply to SVG
elements, since SVG has its own rendering model ([SVG11], Chapter 3).
4. Color units
A <color> is
either a keyword or a numerical specification.
4.1. Basic color keywords
The list of basic color keywords is: aqua, black, blue, fuchsia, gray,
green, lime, maroon, navy, olive, purple, red, silver, teal, white, and
yellow. The color names are ASCII case-insensitive.
Color names and sRGB
values
Named
Numeric
Color name
Hex rgb
Decimal
black
#000000
0,0,0
silver
#C0C0C0
192,192,192
gray
#808080
128,128,128
white
#FFFFFF
255,255,255
maroon
#800000
128,0,0
red
#FF0000
255,0,0
purple
#800080
128,0,128
fuchsia
#FF00FF
255,0,255
green
#008000
0,128,0
lime
#00FF00
0,255,0
olive
#808000
128,128,0
yellow
#FFFF00
255,255,0
navy
#000080
0,0,128
blue
#0000FF
0,0,255
teal
#008080
0,128,128
aqua
#00FFFF
0,255,255
Example(s):
body {color: black; background: white }
h1 { color: maroon }
h2 { color: olive }
4.2. Numerical color values
4.2.1. RGB color values
The RGB color
model is used in numerical color specifications. These examples all
specify the same color:
Example(s):
em { color: #f00 } /* #rgb */
em { color: #ff0000 } /* #rrggbb */
em { color: rgb(255,0,0) }
em { color: rgb(100%, 0%, 0%) }
The format of an RGB value in hexadecimal notation is a ‘#’ immediately followed by either three or six
hexadecimal characters. The three-digit RGB notation (#rgb) is converted into six-digit form
(#rrggbb) by replicating digits,
not by adding zeros. For example, #fb0 expands to #ffbb00. This ensures
that white (#ffffff) can be specified with the short notation (#fff) and
removes any dependencies on the color depth of the display.
The format of an RGB value in the functional notation is ‘rgb(’ followed by a comma-separated list of three
numerical values (either three integer values or three percentage values)
followed by ‘)’. The integer value 255
corresponds to 100%, and to F or FF in the hexadecimal notation:
rgb(255,255,255) = rgb(100%,100%,100%) = #FFF. White space characters are
allowed around the numerical values.
All RGB colors are specified in the sRGB color space (see [SRGB]). User agents may vary in the
fidelity with which they represent these colors, but using sRGB provides
an unambiguous and objectively measurable definition of what the color
should be, which can be related to international standards (see [COLORIMETRY]).
Values outside the device gamut should be clipped or mapped into the
gamut when the gamut is known: the red, green, and blue values must be
changed to fall within the range supported by the device. User agents may
perform higher quality mapping of colors from one gamut to another. This
specification does not define precise clipping behavior. For a typical CRT
monitor, whose device gamut is the same as sRGB, the four rules below are
equivalent:
Example(s):
em { color: rgb(255,0,0) } /* integer range 0 - 255 */
em { color: rgb(300,0,0) } /* clipped to rgb(255,0,0) */
em { color: rgb(255,-10,0) } /* clipped to rgb(255,0,0) */
em { color: rgb(110%, 0%, 0%) } /* clipped to rgb(100%,0%,0%) */
Other devices, such as printers, have different gamuts than sRGB; some
colors outside the 0..255 sRGB range will be representable (inside the
device gamut), while other colors inside the 0..255 sRGB range will be
outside the device gamut and will thus be mapped.
4.2.2. RGBA color values
The RGB color model is
extended in this specification to include “alpha” to allow
specification of the opacity of a color. See simple alpha
compositing for details. These examples all specify the same
color:
Example(s):
em { color: rgb(255,0,0) } /* integer range 0 - 255 */
em { color: rgba(255,0,0,1) /* the same, with explicit opacity of 1 */
em { color: rgb(100%,0%,0%) } /* float range 0.0% - 100.0% */
em { color: rgba(100%,0%,0%,1) } /* the same, with explicit opacity of 1 */
Unlike RGB values, there is no hexadecimal notation for an RGBA value.
The format of an RGBA value in the functional notation is ‘rgba(’ followed by a comma-separated list of three
numerical values (either three integer values or three percentage values),
followed by an <alphavalue>, followed by ‘)’. The integer value 255 corresponds to 100%,
rgba(255,255,255,0.8) = rgba(100%,100%,100%,0.8). White space characters
are allowed around the numerical values.
Implementations must clip the red, green, and blue components of RGBA
color values to the device gamut according to the rules for the RGB color
value composed of those components.
These examples specify effects that are possible with the rgba()
notation:
Example(s):
p { color: rgba(0,0,255,0.5) } /* semi-transparent solid blue */
p { color: rgba(100%, 50%, 0%, 0.1) } /* very transparent solid orange */
Note. If RGBA values are not supported by a
user agent, they should be treated like unrecognized values per the CSS
forward compatibility parsing rules ([CSS21], Chapter 4). RGBA values
must not be treated as simply an RGB value with the opacity
ignored.
CSS1 introduced the ‘transparent’ value for the background-color
property. CSS2 allowed border-color to also accept the ‘transparent’ value.
The Open eBook(tm) Publication Structure 1.0.1 [OEB101] extended the ‘color’ property to also
accept the ‘transparent’ keyword. CSS3 extends the color value
to include the ‘transparent’ keyword to allow its use with all
properties that accept a <color> value. This simplifies the
definition of those properties in CSS3.
transparent
Fully transparent. This keyword can be considered a shorthand for
transparent black, rgba(0,0,0,0), which is its computed value.
4.2.4. HSL color values
CSS3 adds numerical hue-saturation-lightness (HSL) colors as a complement to
numerical RGB colors. It has been observed that RGB colors have the
following limitations:
RGB is hardware-oriented: it reflects the use of CRTs.
RGB is non-intuitive. People can learn how to use RGB, but actually by
internalizing how to translate hue, saturation and lightness, or
something similar, to RGB.
There are several other color schemes possible. Some advantages of HSL
are that it is symmetrical to lightness and darkness (which is not the
case with HSV for example), and it is trivial to convert HSL to RGB.
HSL colors are encoding as a triple (hue, saturation, lightness). Hue
is represented as an angle of the color circle (i.e. the rainbow
represented in a circle). This angle is so typically measured in degrees
that the unit is implicit in CSS; syntactically, only a <number> is
given. By definition red=0=360, and the other colors are spread around the
circle, so green=120, blue=240, etc. As an angle, it implicitly wraps
around such that -120=240 and 480=120. One way an implementation could
normalize such an angle x to the range [0,360) (i.e. zero
degrees, inclusive, to 360 degrees, exclusive) is to compute (((x mod 360)
+ 360) mod 360). Saturation and lightness are represented as percentages.
100% is full saturation, and 0% is a shade of gray. 0% lightness is black,
100% lightness is white, and 50% lightness is “normal”.
So for instance:
Example(s):
* { color: hsl(0, 100%, 50%) } /* red */
* { color: hsl(120, 100%, 50%) } /* lime */
* { color: hsl(120, 100%, 25%) } /* dark green */
* { color: hsl(120, 100%, 75%) } /* light green */
* { color: hsl(120, 75%, 75%) } /* pastel green, and so on */
The advantage of HSL over RGB is that it is far more intuitive: you can
guess at the colors you want, and then tweak. It is also easier to create
sets of matching colors (by keeping the hue the same and varying the
lightness/darkness, and saturation)
If saturation is less than 0%, implementations must clip it to 0%. If
the resulting value is outside the device gamut, implementations must clip
it to the device gamut. This clipping should preserve the hue when
possible, but is otherwise undefined. (In other words, the clipping is
different from applying the rules for clipping of RGB colors after
applying the algorithm below for converting HSL to RGB.)
Converting an HSL color to sRGB is straightforward mathematically.
Here's a sample implementation of the conversion algorithm in JavaScript.
It returns an array of three numbers
representing the red, green, and blue channels of the colors,
normalized to the range [0, 1].
function hslToRgb (hue, sat, light) {
hue = hue % 360;
if (hue < 0) {
hue += 360;
}
sat /= 100;
light /= 100;
function f(n) {
let k = (n + hue/30) % 12;
let a = sat * Math.min(light, 1 - light);
return light - a * Math.max(-1, Math.min(k - 3, 9 - k, 1));
}
return [f(0), f(8), f(4)];
}
4.2.4.1. HSL examples
Each table below represents one hue. Twelve equally spaced colors (i.e.
at 30° intervals) have been chosen from the color circle: red, yellow,
green, cyan, blue, magenta, with all the intermediate colors (the last is
the color between magenta and red).
In each table, the X axis represents the saturation
while the Y axis represents the lightness.
0° Reds
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
30° Reds-Yellows (=Oranges)
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
60° Yellows
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
90° Yellow-Greens
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
120° Greens
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
150° Green-Cyans
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
180° Cyans
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
210° Cyan-Blues
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
240° blues
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
270° Blue-Magentas
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
300° Magentas
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
330° Magenta-Reds
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
4.2.5.
HSLA color values
Just as the ‘rgb()’ functional notation has the ‘rgba()’ alpha counterpart, the ‘hsl()’ functional notation has the ‘hsla()’ alpha counterpart. See simple alpha compositing for details. These examples
specify the same color:
Example(s):
em { color: hsl(120, 100%, 50%) } /* green */
em { color: hsla(120, 100%, 50%, 1) } /* the same, with explicit opacity of 1 */
The format of an HSLA color value in the functional notation is ‘hsla(’ followed by the hue in degrees, saturation and
lightness as a percentage, and an <alphavalue>, followed by ‘)’. White space characters are allowed around the
numerical values.
Implementations must clip the hue, saturation, and lightness components
of HSLA color values to the device gamut according to the rules for the
HSL color value composed of those components.
These examples specify effects that are possible with the hsla()
notation:
Example(s):
p { color: hsla(240, 100%, 50%, 0.5) } /* semi-transparent solid blue */
p { color: hsla(30, 100%, 50%, 0.1) } /* very transparent solid orange */
4.3. Extended color keywords
The table below provides a list of the X11 colors [X11COLORS] supported by
popular browsers with the addition of gray/grey variants from SVG 1.0. The
resulting list is precisely the same as the SVG 1.0 color
keyword names. This specification extends their definition beyond SVG.
The two color swatches on the left illustrate setting the background color
of a table cell in two ways: The first column uses the named color value,
and the second column uses the respective numeric color value.
CSS1 and CSS2 defined the initial value of the ‘border-color’ property to be the value of the ‘color’ property but
did not define a corresponding keyword. This omission was recognized by
SVG, and thus SVG 1.0
introduced the ‘currentColor’ value for the
‘fill’, ‘stroke’, ‘stop-color’, ‘flood-color’, and ‘lighting-color’ properties. CSS3 extends the color
value to include the ‘currentColor’ keyword to allow its use with all
properties that accept a <color> value. This simplifies the
definition of those properties in CSS3.
currentColor
The value of the ‘color’ property. The used value of the ‘currentColor’
keyword is the computed value of the ‘color’ property. If the ‘currentColor’
keyword is set on the ‘color’ property itself, it is treated as
‘color: inherit’.
4.5. CSS system colors
4.5.1. CSS2 system colors
Deprecated.In addition to being able to assign color keyword
values to text, backgrounds, etc., CSS2
allowed authors to specify colors in a manner that integrated them into
the user's graphic environment.
For systems that do not have a corresponding value, the specified value
should be mapped to the nearest system color value, or to a default color.
Note that some profiles of CSS may not support System Colors at all.
The following lists additional values for color-related CSS values and
their general meaning. Any color property can take one of the following
names. Although these are ASCII case-insensitive, it is recommended that the
mixed capitalization shown below be used, to make the names more legible.
ActiveBorder
Active window border.
ActiveCaption
Active window caption.
AppWorkspace
Background color of multiple document interface.
Background
Desktop background.
ButtonFace
The face background color for 3-D elements that appear 3-D due to one
layer of surrounding border.
ButtonHighlight
The color of the border facing the light source for 3-D elements that
appear 3-D due to one layer of surrounding border.
ButtonShadow
The color of the border away from the light source for 3-D elements
that appear 3-D due to one layer of surrounding border.
ButtonText
Text on push buttons.
CaptionText
Text in caption, size box, and scrollbar arrow box.
GrayText
Grayed (disabled) text. This color is set to #000 if the current
display driver does not support a solid gray color.
Highlight
Item(s) selected in a control.
HighlightText
Text of item(s) selected in a control.
InactiveBorder
Inactive window border.
InactiveCaption
Inactive window caption.
InactiveCaptionText
Color of text in an inactive caption.
InfoBackground
Background color for tooltip controls.
InfoText
Text color for tooltip controls.
Menu
Menu background.
MenuText
Text in menus.
Scrollbar
Scroll bar gray area.
ThreeDDarkShadow
The color of the darker (generally outer) of the two borders away from
the light source for 3-D elements that appear 3-D due to two concentric
layers of surrounding border.
ThreeDFace
The face background color for 3-D elements that appear 3-D due to two
concentric layers of surrounding border.
ThreeDHighlight
The color of the lighter (generally outer) of the two borders facing
the light source for 3-D elements that appear 3-D due to two concentric
layers of surrounding border.
ThreeDLightShadow
The color of the darker (generally inner) of the two borders facing
the light source for 3-D elements that appear 3-D due to two concentric
layers of surrounding border.
ThreeDShadow
The color of the lighter (generally inner) of the two borders away
from the light source for 3-D elements that appear 3-D due to two
concentric layers of surrounding border.
Window
Window background.
WindowFrame
Window frame.
WindowText
Text in windows.
DEPRECATED EXAMPLE(S):
For example, to set the foreground and background colors of a
paragraph to the same foreground and background colors of the user's
window, write the following:
p { color: WindowText; background-color: Window }
4.6. Notes on using colors
Although colors can add significant amounts of information to document
and make them more readable, please consider the W3C Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines [WCAG20] when including color in
your documents.
When drawing, implementations must handle alpha according to the
rules in Section
14.2 Simple alpha compositing of [SVG11]. (If the ‘color-interpolation’ or ‘color-rendering’ properties mentioned
in that section are not implemented or do not apply, implementations must
act as though they have their initial values.)
6. Sample style sheet for (X)HTML
This appendix is informative, not normative. This style sheet could be
used by an implementation as part of its default styling of HTML4, XHTML1,
XHTML1.1, XHTML Basic, and other XHTML Family documents.
html {
color: black;
background: white;
}
/* traditional desktop user agent colors for hyperlinks */
:link { color: blue; }
:visited { color: purple; }
/* default focus outline */
:focus {
outline: 1px dotted; /* or 1px dotted invert */
}
7. Profiles
Each specification using CSS3 Color must
define the subset of CSS3 Color features it allows and excludes, and
describe the local meaning of all the components of that subset.
Non normative examples:
CSS3 Color
profile
Specification
HTML4
Accepts
Basic color keywords
RGB six digit hex color values
Excludes
‘color’
property
‘opacity’
property
RGB three digit hex color values and RGB functional notation color
value
RGBA color values
HSL and HSLA color values
Extended color keywords
‘currentColor’ color value
CSS2 UI Colors
‘transparent’ color value
Extra constraints
none.
CSS3 Color
profile
Specification
CSS level 1
Accepts
‘color’
property
Basic color keywords
RGB color values
Excludes
‘opacity’
property
RGBA color values
HSL and HSLA color values
Extended color keywords
‘currentColor’ color value
CSS2 UI Colors
‘transparent’ color value
Extra constraints
none.
CSS3 Color
profile
Specification
CSS level 2
Accepts
‘color’
property
Basic color keywords
RGB color values
CSS2 UI Colors
‘transparent’ color value
Excludes
‘opacity’
property
RGBA color values
HSL and HSLA color values
Extended color keywords
‘currentColor’ color value
Extra constraints
‘transparent’ color value not valid for ‘color’ property.
‘orange’ color value
(part of Extended color keywords) is accepted in CSS level 2 revision
1
CSS3 Color
profile
Specification
SVG 1.0 and 1.1
Accepts
‘color’
property
‘opacity’
property
Basic color keywords
RGB color values
CSS2 UI Colors
Extended color keywords
‘currentColor’ color value
Excludes
RGBA color values
HSL and HSLA color values
‘transparent’ color value
A CSS Color Module Test Suite has
been developed, although further tests may be added. This test suite is
intended to allow user agents to verify their basic conformance to the
specification. This test suite does not pretend to be exhaustive and
does not cover all possible numerical color values. These tests are
available at https://test.csswg.org/harness/suite/css-color-3_dev/.
9. Future features
This section is non-normative.
A number of features related to color management,
such as the ‘@color-profile’ at-rule
for specifying ICC profiles,
a means to control the rendering intent of those profiles,
and a way to use those profiles
(the ‘color-profile’
property)
were removed from CSS Color 3
due to lack of implementation interest at the time.
Thanks to Brad Pettit both for writing up color-profiles, and for
implementing it. Thanks to Steven Pemberton for a write up on HSL
colors. Thanks especially to the feedback from Marc Attinasi, Bert Bos,
Joe Clark, fantasai, Patrick Garies, Tony Graham, Ian Hickson, Susan
Lesch, Alex LeDonne, Cameron McCormack, Krzysztof Maczyński, Chris
Moschini, Chris Murphy, Christoph Päper, David Perrell, Jacob Refstrup,
Dave Singer, Jonathan Stanley, Andrew Thompson, Russ Weakley, Etan Wexler,
David Woolley, Boris Zbarsky, Steve Zilles, the XSL FO subgroup of the XSL
working group, and all the rest of the www-style
community. And thanks to Chris Lilley for being the resident CSS Color
expert.