CSS Named Colors: Everything Explained

Note: Due to publishing limitations, the groups of colors in this post are inserted as images. For the original version with embedded HTML and clickable names, see the original post https://austingil.com/css-named-colors/

Did you know that CSS has Named Colors? Yeah, you’re probably familiar with “white” or “black”. But did you know there are 148 named color keywords?

Some of them are silly, some are common, and some are downright useless. Who’s going to think, “You know what color we need here? Freakin’ blanchedalmond!”

I don’t know why, but I absolutely love named colors, so I put together this collection of things I thought were helpful, cool, interesting, or funny.

• Organized By Group

  • Reds

  • Oranges

  • Yellows

  • Greens

  • Blues

  • Purples

  • Browns

  • Greys

    
    

• My favorite colors
• Color palettes

  • Bold

  • Pastel

  • Neon

  • Purps

  • Synthwave

    
    

• Pointless facts
• Colors that make me hungry
• Colors experiencing identity crisis
• Names for exotic dancers
• Names for ninjas

CSS Named Colors Organized by Group

Most of the time, when I’m looking for something to do with named colors, I’m looking for a complete list of all the choices. I couldn’t find one I liked, so I made this one.

Reds

Oranges

Yellows

Greens

Blues

Purples

Browns

Greys (or Grays)

My Favorite CSS Named Colors

Cool Palettes Made With CSS Named Colors

Just having a bunch of colors to choose from isn’t always helpful. I like having go-to palettes to make my life easier. I’m a big fan of neons, pastels, and purples, but I’m hardly a talented designer, so here we are. Please let me know if you have any more to add. :)

Bold

Pastel

Neon

Purps

Synthwave

Pointless Facts About CSS Named Colors

The Colors “cyan” and “aqua” Have the Same Hex Value (#00ffff). As Do “fuchsia” and “magenta” (#ff00ff).

It seems they couldn’t decide whether it should be spelled “gray” or “grey” so they went with both:

• gray/grey
• darkgray/darkgrey
• slategray/slategrey
• darkslategray/darkslategrey
• dimgray/dimgrey
• lightslategray/lightslategrey
• lightgray/lightgrey

“dimgray” is darker than “gray” which is darker than “darkgray” (which makes no sense at all) which is darker than “lightgray” (ok, back on track).

There are four different “goldenrod” options, but only “lightgoldenrodyellow” explicitly includes “yellow”.

Greens have the most representation (26) and oranges have the least representation (11). This is, however, subjective due to how I narrowed the categories down to 7 different colors.

Many of the colors are between two options and could go either way. And colors will appear different across browsers, devices, brightness, hell, even the tilt of your screen.

And one last, not-so-pointless fact, the color “rebeccapurple” was added to the CSS spec in 2014 as a tribute to the life of Rebecca Alison Meyer, daughter of Eric Meyer.

CSS Named Colors That Make Me Hungry

• bisque
• blanchedalmond
• chocolate
• darkolivegreen
• darkorange
• darksalmon
• honeydew
• lightsalmon
• lime
• limegreen
• mintcream
• olive
• olivedrab
• orange
• orangered
• papayawhip
• peachpuff
• plum
• salmon
• tomato
• wheat

CSS Named Colors With an Identity Crisis

“brown” is definitely a red.

“darkslategray”/“darkslategrey” is more like a dark green.

“darkslateblue” should have been darkslatepurple.

“blueviolet” is just purple.

CSS Named Colors For Exotic Dancers

• burlywood
• goldenrod
• palegoldenrod
• darkgoldenrod
• hotpink
• lavenderblush

CSS Named Colors For Ninjas

There’s really only one and it’s so good: “whitesmoke”

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