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Web Safe Colors Chart

The 216 web-safe colours, and why they no longer matter.

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The palette

The list 
The colours appear here

Quick Tool Overview

The Web Safe Colors Chart shows all 216 colours of the old browser-safe palette with their values, alongside a straight answer about what it was for and why the constraint no longer exists.

What it does
Lists the 216 web-safe colours
You give it
Nothing, or a colour to check
You get back
The full grid, plus the nearest safe colour
Best for
Placeholders and understanding legacy code
Color Tools Free, unlimited use No sign-up Runs in your browser

About the Web Safe Colors Chart

The web-safe palette is the 216 colours formed by every combination of 00, 33, 66, 99, CC and FF in the three channels. The whole chart is here, searchable, with every value ready to copy.

It existed to solve a problem that no longer exists. Monitors in the mid-1990s displayed 256 colours at a time, and browsers on Windows and Mac reserved different system colours from that palette — leaving 216 that both agreed on. Anything outside them was dithered into a speckled approximation, so designers restricted themselves to the safe set.

Every screen made in the last twenty years displays at least 16 million colours, so the constraint is gone entirely. The palette survives as a tidy, evenly spaced grid that is occasionally handy for a quick placeholder, and as a piece of web history that explains why #336699 turns up so often in code from that era. This chart presents it as both, with the hex-shorthand form each colour can be written in.

Key features of the Web Safe Colors Chart

The whole grid

All 216, arranged so the six-value structure of the palette is visible at a glance.

Check any colour

Paste one in to see whether it is web-safe and which safe colour is nearest.

Shorthand shown

Every web-safe colour has a three-digit form — which is the quickest way to spot one.

Honest context

The palette solved a 256-colour display problem that no device has had for twenty years.

Click to copy

Any colour, full or shorthand.

How to use the Web Safe Colors Chart

  1. 1

    Browse the grid

    All 216, arranged by red value so the structure is visible.

  2. 2

    Click to copy

    Any colour, in full or shorthand hex.

  3. 3

    Check a colour

    Paste one in to see whether it is web-safe and which safe colour is nearest.

  4. 4

    Filter by lightness

    To find the usable ones quickly rather than scrolling the whole grid.

Frequently asked questions

No. Every device in use displays millions of colours. The palette is a historical artefact, useful now only as a tidy evenly spaced grid.

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