How to Set Text and Background Color with CSS

See CSS: Tips and Tricks for similar articles.

The color and background-color properties determine how color is set in CSS.

Before you can learn how to set text and background colors in CSS, you need to know a little bit about color values.

Color values can be specified in several ways:

Color Names: There are 17 basic keyword color names that are specified in CSS3. Modern browsers support many additional color names.
```
<div style="color: red;">color: red;</div>
```
Hexadecimal Color Values: Hexadecimal color values take the format #rrggbb, where rr is the amount of red in the color, gg is the amount of green in the color, and bb is the amount of blue in the color.
```
<div style="color: #ff0000;">color: #ff0000;</div>
```
Short Hexadecimal Color Values: Hexadecimal color values can be abbreviated when a color is represented by three pairs of hexadecimal characters. For example, with #ff6600, you can remove one character from each pair. The shorthand color values take the format #rgb, where r is the amount of red, g is the amount of green in the color, and b is the amount of blue. For example, #f60 is the same as #ff6600.
```
selector {
	color: #f60;
```
Functional Notation: Functional notation takes the format rgb(n,n,n), where n is a number between 0 and 255 or a percentage between 0% and 100% for the red, green, and blue intensities of the color, respectively.
```
<div style="color: rgb(255,0,0);">color: rgb(255,0,0);</div>
	<div style="color: rgb(100%,0%,0%);">color: rgb(100%,0%,0%);</div>
```
RGBA-Format Color Names: The additional (the "a") parameter specifying the opacity (the "alpha" channel) of the color as a decimal between 0.0 (completely transparent) and 1.0 (completely opaque). Thus, the code
```
<div style="background-color:
	rgba(255,0,0,0.5)">
	color: rgba(255,0,0,0.5)
	</div>
```
would style the div with a red background with 50% transparency.
HSL Specification: Supported in modern browsers (Internet Explorer from version 9), HSL is used to specify hue (a degree on the color wheel, with 0=red, 120=green, and 240=blue), saturation (a percentage, with 0% a shade of gray and 100% the full color), and lightness (a percentage, with 0% as black and 100% as white). The following code displays a div with red background:
```
<div style="background-color: hsl(0,100%, 50%)"></div>
```

Our recommendation is to use three-character hexadecimal notation (i.e., #rgb) when you can get the color you want and to use the six-digit hexadecimal notation (i.e., #rrggbb) when you need to define the color more granularly.

Now let's learn how to use these properties in the following steps:

As you have seen in the examples above, the color property is used to set the foreground color of an element. Use the property as shown in this code:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Color</title>
</head>
<body>

<h1>Color</h1>

<div style="color: red;">color: red;</div>
<div style="color: #ff0000;">color: #ff0000;</div>
<div style="color: #f00;">color: #f00;</div>
<div style="color: rgb(255,0,0);">color: rgb(255,0,0);</div>
<div style="color: rgb(100%,0%,0%);">color: rgb(100%,0%,0%);</div>
<div style="color: hsl(0,100%, 50%);">color: hsl(0,100%, 50%);</div>

</body>
</html>

This code renders the following: Color

Next, you use the background-color property to specify the background color of an element. It can be applied to block elements and inline elements. The syntax looks like this:

selector {
background-color: color;}

Used in HTML, it looks like this:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Background Color</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Background Color</h1>

<div style="height: 100px; width: 500px; background-color: #ff0000;">
	background-color: #ff0000;
</div>

<div style="height: 100px; width: 500px; background-color: rgba(255, 0, 0, 0.5);">
	background-color: rgba(255, 0, 0, 0.5);
</div>

<div style="height: 100px; width: 500px; background-color: rgba(255, 0, 0, 0.1);">
	background-color: rgba(255, 0, 0, 0.1);
</div>

</body>
</html>

This code renders the following: Background Color