Choosing the right colors is very important in web design. The colors should not only reflect the company’s brand and images. They should also be in perfect harmony and complement each other. Highlight the important areas of the site properly and give a nice back drop for your text and typography.

Not all colors are suitable for computer monitors. Web designers have historically used a few common colors for web designs that look well across different computer monitors. Here are some common ones by name:

#000000 #808080 #C0C0C0 #FFFFFF #800000 #FF0000 #800080 #FF00FF
black gray silver white maroon red purple fuchsia
#008000 #00FF00 #808000 #FFFF00 #000080 #0000FF #008080 #00FFFF
green lime olive yellow navy blue teal aqua

The sicteen colors above are also part of the The HTML 4.01 specification and you can define these colors by name in your CSS or html like: <style=”color:green;”> instead of writing the hex triplet or html code for it.

These sixteen were labelled as sRGB and included in the HTML 3.0 specification, which noted they were “the standard 16 colors supported with the Windows VGA palette.” But most modern browsers these days support more colors by name.

Here is a more comprehensive table:

CSS 1–2.0 / HTML 3.2–4 / VGA color names
Name html Red Green Blue CGA number/alias
White #FFFFFF 100% 100% 100% 15 (white)
Silver #C0C0C0 75% 75% 75% 07 (light gray)
Gray #808080 50% 50% 50% 08 (dark gray)
Black #000000 0% 0% 0% 00 (black)
Red #FF0000 100% 0% 0% 12 (high red)
Maroon #800000 50% 0% 0% 04 (low red)
Yellow #FFFF00 100% 100% 0% 14 (yellow)
Olive #808000 50% 50% 0% 06 (brown)
Lime #00FF00 0% 100% 0% 10 (high green); green
Green #008000 0% 50% 0% 02 (low green)
Aqua #00FFFF 0% 100% 100% 11 (high cyan); cyan
Teal #008080 0% 50% 50% 03 (low cyan)
Blue #0000FF 0% 0% 100% 09 (high blue)
Navy #000080 0% 0% 50% 01 (low blue)
Fuchsia #FF00FF 100% 0% 100% 13 (high magenta); magenta
Purple #800080 50% 0% 50% 05 (low magenta)

dna88 Blog

In: Internet

30 Oct 2011

Starting out the dna88 blog. dna88 blog is a place for some rants about the web design and development technologies, internet and everything else in the universe! Blog posts may include but are not restricted to xhtml, CSS, php, mysql database, ajax, jquery, apache server, physics, super string theory,  brane multiverse, parallel universes, philosophy, movies, TV series, music, heavy metal bands and whatever pops into my mind. In short this is a blog from a techno geek for similar minded webmasters, and internet addicts like me.  The vision is the same as always, which made internet for what it is – an attitude to help others and be helped.

Hang out if you like and post your comments to my posts if you feel like

About this blog

dna88 blog is a place for some rants about the web design and development technologies, internet and everything else in the universe! Blog posts may include but are not restricted to xhtml, CSS, php, mysql database, ajax, jquery, apache server, physics, super string theory, brane multiverse, parallel universes, philosophy, movies, TV series, music, heavy metal bands and whatever pops into my mind.

Share this page





  • Eesti: I have a smaller budget to really obtain ebooks and movies but your site is a good help to myself [...]
  • habib: Hi, Nice writing on dna88 Blog. Thanks [...]
  • allandorian: You got a really useful blog I have been here reading for about an hour. I am a newbie and your succ [...]
  • website development: This is the first time i’m visiting your site. I see lots of usefull stuffs in your site. Well don [...]
  • InternetMarketing: Internet Marketing- The Learning Never Stops. Incredible Internet Marketing Tips. You can also check [...]