Color codes are ways of representing the colors we see everyday in a format that a computer can interpret and display. Commonly used in websites and other software applications, there are a variety of formats, including Hex color codes, RGB and HSL values, and HTML color names, amongst others.

Hex color codes

The most popular are Hex color codes; three byte hexadecimal numbers (meaning they consist of six digits), with each byte, or pair of characters in the Hex code, representing the intensity of red, green and blue in the color respectively.

# XX XX XX

Hex code byte values range from 00, which is the lowest intensity of a color, to FF which represents the highest intensity. The color white, for example, is made by mixing each of the three primary colors at their full intensity, resulting in the Hex color code of #FFFFFF.

#FFFFFF

Black, the absence of any color on a screen display, is the complete opposite, with each color displayed at their lowest possible intensity and a Hex color code of #000000.

#000000

Understanding the basics of Hex color code notation we can create grayscale colors very easily, since they consist of equal intensities of each color:

#454545 #999999

The three primary colors, red, green and blue, are made by mixing the highest intensity of the desired color with the lowest intensities of the other two:

#FF0000 #00FF00 #0000FF

With modern browsers supporting the full spectrum of 24-bit color, there are 16,777,216 different color possibilities. Use our color picker to explore all 16.7 million of them, or if that’s too many, check out our color charts for a selection of palettes focused on flat design, Material design and web safe colors.