- 3 Methods to Set a Background Color with HTML & CSS
- Setting a Solid Background Color
- Creating a Gradient Background
- Creating a Changing Background
- Community Q&A
- CSS Backgrounds
- CSS background-color
- Example
- Other Elements
- Example
- Opacity / Transparency
- Example
- Transparency using RGBA
- Example
- The CSS Background Color Property
- background
- Try it
- Constituent properties
- Syntax
- Values
- Accessibility concerns
- Formal definition
- Formal syntax
- Examples
- Setting backgrounds with color keywords and images
- HTML
- CSS
- Result
- Specifications
- Browser compatibility
- See also
- Found a content problem with this page?
- MDN
- Support
- Our communities
- Developers
3 Methods to Set a Background Color with HTML & CSS
This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Darlene Antonelli, MA. Darlene Antonelli is a Technology Writer and Editor for wikiHow. Darlene has experience teaching college courses, writing technology-related articles, and working hands-on in the technology field. She earned an MA in Writing from Rowan University in 2012 and wrote her thesis on online communities and the personalities curated in such communities.
This article has been viewed 1,504,528 times.
Did you want to change the background color of that page using HTML? Unfortunately, with HTML 5, this is no longer possible in just HTML coding. Instead, you’ll need to use both HTML and CSS coding, which works even better. This wikiHow teaches you how to change the background color of a web page by editing its HTML and CSS.
- Although the attribute for HTML to manage background color is gone, you can still use HTML with CSS to change your background color easily.
- You’ll need a numeric code for the color you want if you want a specific color. If you don’t need a specific color, you can use words like «orange» or «light blue.»
- When editing a web page with HTML and CSS, you can create a solid background, gradient, or changing background.
Setting a Solid Background Color
body background-color: #d24dff; >
DOCTYPE html> html> head> style> body background-color: #d24dff > style> head> html>
DOCTYPE html> html> head> style> body background-color: #93B874; > h1 background-color: #00b33c; > p background-color: #FFFFFF); > style> head> body> h1>Header with Green Backgroundh1> p>Paragraph with white backgroundp> body> html>
Creating a Gradient Background
Understand the basic syntax of this process. When making a gradient, there are two pieces of information you’ll need: the starting point/angle, and the colors that the gradient will transition between. You can select multiple colors to have the gradient move between all of them, and you can set a direction or angle for the gradient. [2] X Research source
background: linear-gradient(direction/angle, color1, color2, color3, etc);
html min-height: 100%; > body background: -webkit-linear-gradient(#93B874, #C9DCB9); background: -o-linear-gradient(#93B874, #C9DCB9); background: -moz-linear-gradient(#93B874, #C9DCB9); background: linear-gradient(#93B874, #C9DCB9); background-color: #93B874; >
html min-height: 100%;> body background: -webkit-linear-gradient(left, #93B874, #C9DCB9); background: -o-linear-gradient(right, #93B874, #C9DCB9); background: -moz-linear-gradient(right, #93B874, #C9DCB9); background: linear-gradient(to right, #93B874, #C9DCB9); background-color: #93B874; >
- For example, not only can you add more than two colors, you can also put a percentage after each one. This will allow you to set how much spacing you want each color segment to have. Here’s a sample gradient that uses this principle:
background: linear-gradient(#93B874 10%, #C9DCB9 70%, #000000 90%);
background: linear-gradient(to right, rgba(147,184,116,0), rgba(147,184,116,1));
DOCTYPE html> html> head> style> html min-height: 100%; > body background: -webkit-linear-gradient(left, #93B874, #C9DCB9); background: -o-linear-gradient(right, #93B874, #C9DCB9); background: -moz-linear-gradient(right, #93B874, #C9DCB9); background: linear-gradient(to right, #93B874, #C9DCB9); background-color: #93B874; > style> head> body> body> html>
Creating a Changing Background
-webkit-animation: colorchange 60s infinite; animation: colorchange 60s infinite;
@-webkit-keyframes colorchange 0% background: #33FFF3;> 25% background: #78281F;> 50% background: #117A65;> 75% background: #DC7633;> 100% background: #9B59B6;> > @keyframes colorchange 0% background: #33FFF3;> 25% background: #78281F;> 50% background: #117A65;> 75% background: #DC7633;> 100% background: #9B59B6;> >
DOCTYPE html> html> head> style> body -webkit-animation: colorchange 60s infinite; animation: colorchange 60s infinite; > @-webkit-keyframes colorchange 0% background: #33FFF3;> 25% background: #78281F;> 50% background: #117A65;> 75% background: #DC7633;> 100% background: #9B59B6;> > @keyframes colorchange 0% background: #33FFF3;> 25% background: #78281F;> 50% background: #117A65;> 75% background: #DC7633;> 100% background: #9B59B6;> > style> head> body> body> html>
Community Q&A
Use the background-size property inside of the «body» element. For example, «background-size: 300px 150px» makes the background 300 pixels wide and 150 pixels high.
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As a small thank you, we’d like to offer you a $30 gift card (valid at GoNift.com). Use it to try out great new products and services nationwide without paying full price—wine, food delivery, clothing and more. Enjoy! Claim Your Gift If wikiHow has helped you, please consider a small contribution to support us in helping more readers like you. We’re committed to providing the world with free how-to resources, and even $1 helps us in our mission. Support wikiHow
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As a small thank you, we’d like to offer you a $30 gift card (valid at GoNift.com). Use it to try out great new products and services nationwide without paying full price—wine, food delivery, clothing and more. Enjoy! Claim Your Gift If wikiHow has helped you, please consider a small contribution to support us in helping more readers like you. We’re committed to providing the world with free how-to resources, and even $1 helps us in our mission. Support wikiHow
CSS Backgrounds
The CSS background properties are used to add background effects for elements.
In these chapters, you will learn about the following CSS background properties:
- background-color
- background-image
- background-repeat
- background-attachment
- background-position
- background (shorthand property)
CSS background-color
The background-color property specifies the background color of an element.
Example
The background color of a page is set like this:
With CSS, a color is most often specified by:
- a valid color name — like «red»
- a HEX value — like «#ff0000»
- an RGB value — like «rgb(255,0,0)»
Look at CSS Color Values for a complete list of possible color values.
Other Elements
You can set the background color for any HTML elements:
Example
Here, the ,
, and elements will have different background colors:
div background-color: lightblue;
>
Opacity / Transparency
The opacity property specifies the opacity/transparency of an element. It can take a value from 0.0 — 1.0. The lower value, the more transparent:
Example
Note: When using the opacity property to add transparency to the background of an element, all of its child elements inherit the same transparency. This can make the text inside a fully transparent element hard to read.
Transparency using RGBA
If you do not want to apply opacity to child elements, like in our example above, use RGBA color values. The following example sets the opacity for the background color and not the text:
You learned from our CSS Colors Chapter, that you can use RGB as a color value. In addition to RGB, you can use an RGB color value with an alpha channel (RGBA) — which specifies the opacity for a color.
An RGBA color value is specified with: rgba(red, green, blue, alpha). The alpha parameter is a number between 0.0 (fully transparent) and 1.0 (fully opaque).
Tip: You will learn more about RGBA Colors in our CSS Colors Chapter.
Example
The CSS Background Color Property
background
The background shorthand CSS property sets all background style properties at once, such as color, image, origin and size, or repeat method. Component properties not set in the background shorthand property value declaration are set to their default values.
Try it
Constituent properties
This property is a shorthand for the following CSS properties:
Syntax
/* Using a */ background: green; /* Using a and */ background: url("test.jpg") repeat-y; /* Using a and */ background: border-box red; /* A single image, centered and scaled */ background: no-repeat center/80% url("../img/image.png"); /* Global values */ background: inherit; background: initial; background: revert; background: revert-layer; background: unset;
The background property is specified as one or more background layers, separated by commas.
The syntax of each layer is as follows:
- Each layer may include zero or one occurrences of any of the following values:
- The value may only be included immediately after , separated with the ‘/’ character, like this: » center/80% «.
- The value may be included zero, one, or two times. If included once, it sets both background-origin and background-clip . If it is included twice, the first occurrence sets background-origin , and the second sets background-clip .
- The value may only be included in the last layer specified.
Values
See background-clip and background-origin . Default: border-box and padding-box respectively.
See background-color . Default: transparent .
The following three lines of CSS are equivalent:
background: none; background: transparent; background: repeat scroll 0% 0% / auto padding-box border-box none transparent;
Accessibility concerns
Browsers do not provide any special information on background images to assistive technology. This is important primarily for screen readers, as a screen reader will not announce its presence and therefore convey nothing to its users. If the image contains information critical to understanding the page’s overall purpose, it is better to describe it semantically in the document.
Formal definition
- background-image : none
- background-position : 0% 0%
- background-size : auto auto
- background-repeat : repeat
- background-origin : padding-box
- background-clip : border-box
- background-attachment : scroll
- background-color : transparent
- background-position : refer to the size of the background positioning area minus size of background image; size refers to the width for horizontal offsets and to the height for vertical offsets
- background-size : relative to the background positioning area
- background-image : as specified, but with url() values made absolute
- background-position : as each of the properties of the shorthand:
- background-position-x : A list, each item consisting of: an offset given as a combination of an absolute length and a percentage, plus an origin keyword
- background-position-y : A list, each item consisting of: an offset given as a combination of an absolute length and a percentage, plus an origin keyword
- background-color : a color
- background-image : discrete
- background-clip : a repeatable list of
- background-position : a repeatable list of
- background-size : a repeatable list of
- background-repeat : discrete
- background-attachment : discrete
Formal syntax
background =
[ # , ]?=
||
[ / ]? ||
||
||
||
=
||
||
[ / ]? ||
||
||
||
=
|
none=
[ left | center | right | top | bottom | ] |
[ left | center | right | ] [ top | center | bottom | ] |
[ center | [ left | right ] ? ] && [ center | [ top | bottom ] ? ]=
[ | auto ] |
cover |
contain=
repeat-x |
repeat-y |
[ repeat | space | round | no-repeat ]=
scroll |
fixed |
local=
border-box |
padding-box |
content-box=
|=
|=
url( * ) |
src( * )Examples
Setting backgrounds with color keywords and images
HTML
p class="topbanner"> Starry skybr /> Twinkle twinklebr /> Starry sky p> p class="warning">Here is a paragraphp> p>p>
CSS
.warning background: pink; > .topbanner background: url("starsolid.gif") #99f repeat-y fixed; >
Result
Specifications
Browser compatibility
BCD tables only load in the browser
See also
Found a content problem with this page?
This page was last modified on Jul 18, 2023 by MDN contributors.
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