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Conversion of Numerical Color Codes to Hex Color Codes

Enhancing your HTML pages to incorporate colored backgrounds, text, table cells, links, etc., can make a huge difference to the appeal of your web site. A user is more likely to stay on your site longer if they are visually pleased by its format. Of course, if you use colors poorly, users will evacuate quicker than if you had stayed with the default colors used by your browser. So, choose your colors carefully. Soft, muted colors look a far sight better than brash, bold colors. I am constantly being repulsed away from sites using chartreuse, orange and bright yellow as their primary colors. Gross!

The codes for the colors you can use are based on hexidecimal, or HEX, code.

All of the color codes used by HTML 3.0 specification are six digits. Each group of two represents a primary color. The first two digits represent RED, the middle two represent GREEN, and the last two represent BLUE.

In order to get a color such as red, the HEX code would be FF0000. The first two digits represented by "FF" means that red is fully saturated, while both GREEN and BLUE, which is set as "00", denotes no addition of these two color elements. It is kind of like adding color to a can of white paint. In order to get a particular color, you will have to add a certain number of parts of one of these three primary colors.

The chart below shows the hexidecimal equivalents to color terms that you might see associated to an image you are working on in most graphics programs.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
0 000 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 0
1 016 017 018 019 020 021 022 023 024 025 026 027 028 029 030 031 1
2 032 033 034 035 036 037 038 039 040 041 042 043 044 045 046 047 2
3 048 049 050 051 052 053 054 055 056 057 058 059 060 061 062 063 3
4 064 065 066 067 068 069 070 071 072 073 074 075 076 077 078 079 4
5 080 081 082 083 084 085 086 087 088 089 090 091 092 093 094 095 5
6 096 097 098 099 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 6
7 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 7
8 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 8
9 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 9
A 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 A
B 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 B
C 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 C
D 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 D
E 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 E
F 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 F
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F

The table above is used as follows: a typical color code might be "052 179 084." To translate this to hexidecimal, take the first of the three sets, "052", and find 052 on the table. The column to the left is used as the first Hex character and the top or bottom row is used for the second Hex character--34 is your answer. The 179 translates in the same manner as b3. The third as 54. You have a hex value for the color you want as 34b354.

It seems that it is much easier to find the numerical code for the colors in most graphics software today, so this chart should be helpful. JASC uses numerical codes in Paint Shop Pro to identify colors within an image. So does Photoshop from Adobe. My familiarity with other graphics programs is limited but I suspect they all use the same principles.

Just a few of the nearly 16.8 million possible colors!


Description1 		Hex
Color
Red
Green
Blue
Color (appearance on web)
red FF0000 255 000 000
lime 00FF00 000 255 000
blue 0000FF 000 000 255
white FFFFFF 255 255 255
black 000000 000 000 000
deepskyblue 00BFFF 000 191 255
green 008000 000 050 000
darkorange FF8C00 255 140 000
cornflowerblue 6495ED 100 149 237
khaki F0E68C 240 230 140
teal 008080 000 050 050
palegreen 98FB98 152 251 152
pink FFC0CB 255 192 203
slategray 708090 112 128 144
peru CD853F 205 133 063
aqua 00FFFF 000 255 255
burlywood DEB887 222 184 135
aliceblue F0F8FF 240 248 255
lemonchiffon FFFACD 255 250 205
indigo 4B0082 075 000 130
crimson DC143C 220 020 060
magenta FF00FF 255 000 255
chocolate D2691E 210 105 030
forestgreen 228B22 034 139 034
darkgray A9A9A9 169 169 169
lightgoldenrodyellow FAFAD2 250 250 210
firebrick B22222 178 034 034
lavendar E6E6FA 230 230 250
lightcoral F08080 240 128 128
mediumspringgreen 00FA9A 000 250 154
thistle D8BFD8 216 191 216
sienna A0522D 160 082 045
palegoldenrod EEE8AA 238 232 170
mediumpurple 9370D8 147 112 216
royalblue 4169E1 065 105 225
orange FFA500 255 165 000
tan D2B48C 210 180 140
plum DDA0DD 221 160 221
olive 808000 128 128 000
yellowgreen 9ACD32 154 205 050
seashell FFF5EE 255 245 238
navajowhite FFDEAD 255 222 173
palevioletred D87093 216 112 147
silver C0C0C0 192 192 192
rosybrown BC8F8F 188 143 143

This last chart represents just some of the colors that are available and, as a side note, you can use the name in the first column instead of a hexidecimal code to get the color you want. This will, however, limit your color use as not all colors will be represented with a special name.

I hope you find this helpful!





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