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RGB Hex Colour Chart

Posted September 22, 2003 in Cheat Sheets

The RGB Hex colour chart is a very large (183kB) PNG file, and is sized to fit on a standard A4 piece of paper. It shows the 216 so-called "web safe" or "non-dithering" colours (there are actually only 22 web safe colours, but those are revolting).

If you link to this resource, please link to this page and not to the image directly.

And finally, if you like the cheat sheets, and want to say thanks, please consider buying me something from my Amazon Wishlist. Thankyou very much to those who have already hunted it down and sent me something nice - I'm very grateful!

RGB Hex Colour Chart was posted September 22, 2003 in Cheat Sheets and has been tagged with color, rgb, reference, webdesign, tools, cheatsheet, colour, css, design, guide, hex, html and webdev.

41 comments

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Nice job! The predefined color names (like red, mauve, etc..) would be a nice add-on.
I think I love you!!

Thanx bunches for the cheat sheets!!!
Rachael
United States #3: October 16, 2005
thanks for the help, it really comes in handy !!!
Nice, thank you!
WebCester
Switzerland #5: November 21, 2005
Nice and all, but who still designs using 216 colors?
yep v. helpful especially when im working away from home!

thanx :-)

oh and btw , im usin them as a base and changing them to get the colour i want so thats who uses them...
oh and who says the're cheat sheets?????

they r just a useful guide...
Dr. K.
Norway #8: May 23, 2006
Nice, but "printer friendly"?

After going through a run-of-the-mill inkjet printer, guessing would do just as well
Ephraim
Germany #9: August 10, 2006
"Nice and all, but who still designs using 216 colors?" - me.

id love to have this vectorized as pdf... and you could write #F9C instead of this FF99CC, as the sheet only shows web-SMART colors.

btw: i love ur sheets, too.
Who still designs using 216 colours?

Web designers. Designers on the web. Designers who use sheets like this.

...90% of the population who read this.

I hope this answered your question.
Enjoing this good job guy.
Nice...i've been trying to figure out the logic of RGB hex codes, and this is starting to make more sense...

R G B
00 00 00

Only every 3rd pair is supported, like 003300, 006600, (shortened as #030 or #360 for css).

But what about letters? Same thing, but there is no equivalent of 0, so we do every third starting at "A"...so

00CC00 is browser safe, but not 00AA00 or 00BB00.

00FF00, or #0f0 in css short-hand.
Haven't been limited to 256 colors since my Mac Quadra 605
United States #14: November 13, 2006
>> Who still designs using 216 colours?

> Web designers. Designers on the web. Designers who use sheets like this.

You mean "Web Designers who haven't paid attention to Web developments since 1997."

http://www.lynda.com/hex.asp
Franky
United States #15: December 4, 2006
Actually, w3c standards are 256 web colors because not everyone owns a brand new PC, one can reach a larger audience with standards. 256 colors are available to everyone, some people won't see non web standard colors if you use them, they will display differently, and that affects design, which is the whole point when solving a visual communication problem. But go ahead and use whatever colors you want its your design.
While this is a great cheat sheet, I'm more inclined to agree with comment #15. Most people these days are using at least 8-bit colour these days. 256 went belly up a long, long time ago.
I am Recrut.
I hope I welcome here...
I am new to this...
:)
Flooring Contractor
United Kingdom #18: February 6, 2007
Being slightly colour blind it's always useful to have these kind of colour sheets as a resource
While most of this site is in various Asian languages, I find the visual display/representation clever. It really puts all the different Web Safe colors into context.

Martin Middelmann, Massachusetts, USA
Northern California
United States #20: March 6, 2007
Various Asian languages? Seems like just plain old Japanese to me. Still, it is quite good.
Nioton
United States #21: May 1, 2007
Well, thanks alot for your effort and time to code them on paper. great job.
good luck
Great, i could use a cheatcheat like this!!
tyler durden
United States #23: August 4, 2007
HEX and RGB are not the same thing.

RGB is used in CSS in the context
STYLE ="color: rgb(153, 0, 51); "
This chart only has Hex codes, not RGB.
I came to the chart looking for HEX-RGB conversion.
THAT would be useful.
Hi Tyler,

RGB refers to the way the colour is defined - and means that the amount of red, blue and green are specifically defined. Other colour types are CMKY and HSV, for example.

The colours on this sheet are RGB - they are three pairs of digits, each pair defining the amount of red, blue and green respectively in each colour.

The example you give is the decimal equivalent of the hexadecimal numbers, and those numbers on a sheet would be an "RGB Dec" colour chart.

The conversion you are talking about would be a HEX - DEC conversion, and there are plenty on the web (the chart at http://ascii.cl/conversion.htm looks like a good one).
Hey, I love your Cheat Sheets including this RGB Hex Color Chart one I have many a time forgotten a simple color code that I have been able to find quickly using this cheat sheet, I must say these are the best free cheat sheets I could find.

I even posted on my blog about your cheat sheets: http://oysblog.uni.cc/2007/08/31/cheat-sheets/
Olga
Serbia And Montenegro #26: September 1, 2007
Thanks, extremely useful tool for me.
Still a gem of information - thanks
hello I need to know
can you send me the Cmyk sistem colors if you have???
thanks
it´s my e-mail send for this
tonyumax@itelefonica.com.br
A guy...
Unknown #29: December 3, 2007
"you could write #F9C instead of this FF99CC" - ugh, you can but don't. Those numbers in hex do not equal each other, just as in base 10, 1 <> 11.
thanks buddy .those were really helpfull.thanks a lot
steve
United Kingdom #31: February 15, 2008
these are probably the best cheat sheets in the world - STRONG WORK!!!!
Thanks for the lovely cheatsheets.
Evi
Switzerland #33: March 1, 2008
Vielen Dank.

Viele Grüsse aus der Schweiz
Thanks for the cheatsheet
Thank you jack,
Amazing
great job....!
Internet Marketing
Unknown #36: April 6, 2008
Extremely usefull again. Thank you for all the work you put on this site. Will remember your wishlist :-)
Tomse
Denmark #37: June 30, 2008
Really nice cheat sheets all over...

this one here has a link error the PDF links to http://www.addedbytes.com/download/html-character-entities-cheat-sheet.pdf and not http://www.addedbytes.com/download/rgb-hex-cheat-sheet-v1.pdf.

That said.. the sheets are very easy to read, and have a really nice visual setup (rememdering the CSS cheat sheet here)..

Keep up the good work, I look forward to see some more of these in the future.
Tomse: Thanks and well spotted. I've corrected the download link.
"there are actually only 22 web safe colours"

Ive read hundreds of web design article that state there are 256 web safe colors.. where did you find that there only 22?
@Tony: The original article is no longer available but there's a mirror at: http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~wilkins/color/websafecolors.html

There are 216 colours usually listed as web-safe (6 times 6 times 6) (I also heard somewhere that computers used to use 256 colours but around 40 of those were reserved system colours on PC and Mac).

However, those 216 colours are actually not (well, were not) displayed unadjusted across all systems and browsers. Only 22 colours were displayed consistently exactly as intended.
Fantastic project! Thanks!

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