Web-Safe Colors and Chart

Why web-safe

Web-safe colors are colors that show up as solid colors in all web browsers and systems that display at least 216 colors. These days that's pretty much all of them.

Non web-safe colors may dither on some monitors. The system tries to guess what the color is that it doesn't know how to display and shows a mix of dots in two different colors. What is a beautiful beige on one monitor may be pink and purple dots on another one!

Is it necessary?

These days most users have millions of color available why not use the others? This question is discussed in an interesting Webmonkey article that you should read if you will be working with bothe graphics and colors on the web. They com up with a very small "Really-safe pallette" of colors that that are rendered the same whether in an image or html background on systems with different numbers of colors.

If you are using a color in a limited area such as a font color or a small part of a graphic and a non web-safe color really is noticeably better, you can probably get away with using it. I still wouldn't advise using one for large areas or background. If you do, find out what it looks like on as many systems as possible.

Knowing which colors are web-safe is easy. They all follow a simple rule. Only use 00, 33, 66, 99, cc, or ff for each color component (red, green, or blue).

Web Safe Color Chart