CSS color names

The 141 keywords you can write instead of a hex code, sorted by hue so that similar colors sit together. Click a swatch to copy its name.

What a keyword is worth

A keyword is exactly as precise as the hex code it stands for: they are the same color, written two ways. What a name buys you is readability in a stylesheet, and what it costs you is range, because there are only 141 of them and none can be nudged.

The list is also a historical accident rather than a design. It grew out of early browser vocabularies, which is why it holds four spellings of grey, several near-identical blues, and nothing at all between some neighbouring hues.

Sorted by hue, not by name

Alphabetical order scatters the greens across the whole page and makes choosing between two similar names a matter of scrolling back and forth. These are ordered by hue angle in OKLCH, with the greys collected at the end by lightness, because a grey has no hue worth sorting on.

Where these lead

125 of the 141 sit close enough to a color in the color index to link there, where you will find conversions, shade scales and palettes. The rest carry no link rather than an approximate one.

For colors that are not in this vocabulary, the color picker converts anything you paste, and the 216 web safe colors are a separate fixed list with its own history.