Web Safe Colours

The web safe colour palette consists of 216 colour values which was developed when many computer displays were only capable of displaying 256 colours. The requirement was a set of colours that could be shown without dithering on 256-color displays. 216 was chosen partly because computer operating systems customarily reserved sixteen to twenty colours for their own use, and partly because it allows exactly six shades each of red, green, and blue (6 × 6 × 6 = 216).

The list of colours is often presented as if it has special properties that render them immune to dithering. In fact, on 256-color displays applications can set a palette of any selection of colours that they choose, dithering the rest. These colours were chosen specifically because they matched the palettes selected by the then leading browser applications. Fortunately, there were not radically different palettes in use in different popular browsers.

By the early years of the 21st century, driven by the needs of video games and digital photos, personal computers typically had at least 16-bit colour and usually 24-bit (true colour). Even mobile devices had at least 16-bit colour, driven by the inclusion of cameras on mobile (or cell) phones. The use of "web-safe" colours fell into disuse, but persisted as folklore.

The "web-safe" colours do not have names, but each can be specified by an RGB triplet (eg, #000000 is black - 00 + 00 + 00). The Cascading Style Sheets language supports both 3 and 6 six-digit numbers. The digit "3" is equivalent to the hexadecimal numeral "33"; "C" is equivalent to "CC". For example, "F93" is equivalent to "#FF9933".

The table below contains 216 "web safe" colours. Click on any of the colours below to view its Hexadecimal value. Alternatively, you can enter a hexadecimal value manually, and view its colour equivalent.