What are Hexadecimal Colors?

For computer displays, hex codes are the go-to choice for determining colors.

Also known as hexadecimal numbers, these six digits can be broken down into three groups of two that represent Red, Green and Blue levels in a color.

With this system you have complete control over the exact shade desired on any screen!

Color selection can, at times, be as simple as assigning letters to represent each primary color—Red (R), Green (G) and Blue (B).

And with RGB having values of 0-255 for each hue, the math comes out to 16 million+ possible colors – that’s far more than any human eye can distinguish!!

What Do Hexadecimal Numbers Mean?

Hex numbers, also called hexadecimal codes, contain three pairs of characters. The RGB color system used by computer screens implies that each set (or byte) symbolizes one out of the Red, Green and Blue colors of light.

The vibrant Red hues of the first pair set a captivating tone, while the second emanate lively Green.

Last but not least, an enchanting Blue radiates from the third – all three pairs ensure elegance and style!

The numbers 0-9 are accompanied by letters A-F, allowing for a total of 16 distinct digits. For example, 10 is represented as ‘A’, 11 as ‘B’, and so on until 15 which becomes ‘F’.

This is a way of counting using the numbers 0-9 and then A-F – a base 16 system.

For quality display on all browsers, the six-digit codes must be preceded with a hash mark. Every two digit hex pair has a value ranging from 00 (none) to FF which is equivalent to 256 – this generates over sixteen million possible colors…

A color is invisible when the light switch for it is off, which means that a value of 00 turns off the hue.

Conversely, FF indicates full brightness – so #FF0000 stands out as pure red because all green and blue lights are switched OFF.

Once we become knowledgeable in this code language, colors appear much more straightforward.

Why Are Some Color Codes Only 3 Digits?

When two numbers are the same, you can use three numbers to write them. For example, #FF0000 means pure red, but you can also write it as #F00.

Do Color Codes Need to Use Uppercase Letters?

Hex codes are like numbers and letters. They can be written with capital or small letters. It is okay if the HTML on my website changes uppercase hex codes to lowercase. The computer still understands them the same way.

What Color is FFFFFF?

FF means that all the red, green and blue lights are turned on. When all the lights are turned on it makes white. White can also be written as RGB (255, 255, 255) or #FFF which is a 3 digit code.

What Color is 000000?

The number ’00’ means that Red, Green, and Blue lights are all turned off. This makes it the darkest black you can see on a digital device. You can also write black as RGB(0,0,0) or #000.

websafe colours, web palette

The websafe palette consists of 216 colours that when displayed on a 256-colour (8 bit) monitor will be displayed as continuous flat colours.

These colours will be rendered as flat colours on both Windows and Macintosh platforms – as to hue and saturation, well…

Hexadecimal system (base 16)

CSS SHORTHAND

When defining colours in CSS, hexadecimal codes may be abbreviated to a single-digit for each of the 2-digit pairs; e.g. #FF0033 may be abbreviated to #F03.

 

The hexadecimal counting system consists of 16 unique symbols;

  • numbers from 0-9
  • letters from A-F

Counting in hexadecimal: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F, where 0 is null and F is the highest value.

Specifying websafe colours (using hexadecimal notation)

Colours in HTML are specified by a hash (#) followed by a six-digit hexadecimal number. This number consists of three 2-digit numbers corresponding to red, green and blue (RGB) values.

#XXxxxx = red
#xxXXxx = green
#xxxxXX = blue

Find the Most Popular Hex Codes by Color

To make your picking much easier, I’ve narrowed it down to the top codes for the main colors.

  • Pink Hex Codes: Coming soon!
  • Red Hex Codes
  • Purple Hex Codes: Coming soon!
  • Blue Hex Codes
  • Green Hex Codes
  • Yellow Hex Codes
  • Orange Hex Codes: Coming soon!
  • Gold Hex CodesComing soon!
  • White Hex CodesComing soon!
  • Brown Hex Codes: Coming soon!
  • Black Hex Codes: Coming soon!
  • Gray Hex Codes: Coming soon!
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Jamie Spencer

My name is Jamie Spencer and I have spent the past 10 years building money making blogs. After growing tired of the 9-5, commuting and never seeing my family I decided that I wanted to make some changes and launched my first blog. Since then I have launched lots of successful niche blogs and after selling my survivalist blog I decided to teach other people how to do the same.