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Web Safe Colors

Color Charts with hexadecimal values

The HTML4.01 and CSS 2.1 specification defined sixteen named colors, as shown in table one. CSS 2.1 also supports orange color (#ffa500). Table two shows the standard color palette that showed 216 colors without dithering. The number 216 was used because it allows six equally spaced shades of red, green and blue (6x6x6), each from FF to 00. The remaining colors were typically reserved for the operating system. In fact many applications earlier did not support 216 colors, and the result was that the browsers actually dithered on such systems. Another flaw was that web safe colors were best shown in 8 bit displays. In 16 bit systems, only 22 of the 216 colors are reliably displayed without inconsistent remapping. Those 22 safest web colors are underlined in table two below.

Today web safe colors are more or less history, simply because most computers, gadgets and mobile devices supports 24-bit true color. Anyway, the web safe color palette can still be a useful tool. WCAG 2 demand contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 (AA), up to at least 7:1 (AAA) between the text and the background. Instead of looking up 16 million colors (24 bit), it might be easier to use table two below with its 216 colors. All tables show hexadecimal values, but table two could be listed short-hand for the RGB value (#603 instead of HEX code #660033). Please use the Color Converter if you want RGB values instead of hexadecimal values.

Table of contents

1. Table 1 - 16 Named Colors
2. Table 2 - 216 Web Safe Colors