Tutorials References Menu

HTML HSL and HSLA Colors


HSL stands for hue, saturation, and lightness.

HSLA color values are an extension of HSL with an Alpha channel (opacity).


HSL Color Values

In HTML, a color can be specified using hue, saturation, and lightness (HSL) in the form:

hsl(hue, saturation, lightness)

Hue is a degree on the color wheel from 0 to 360. 0 is red, 120 is green, and 240 is blue.

Saturation is a percentage value, 0% means a shade of gray, and 100% is the full color.

Lightness is also a percentage value, 0% is black, and 100% is white.

Experiment by mixing the HSL values below:

 

HUE

0

SATURATION

100%

LIGHTNESS

50%

Example

hsl(0, 100%, 50%)
hsl(240, 100%, 50%)
hsl(147, 50%, 47%)
hsl(300, 76%, 72%)
hsl(39, 100%, 50%)
hsl(248, 53%, 58%)

Try it Yourself »

Saturation

Saturation can be described as the intensity of a color.

100% is pure color, no shades of gray

50% is 50% gray, but you can still see the color.

0% is completely gray, you can no longer see the color.

Example

hsl(0, 100%, 50%)
hsl(0, 80%, 50%)
hsl(0, 60%, 50%)
hsl(0, 40%, 50%)
hsl(0, 20%, 50%)
hsl(0, 0%, 50%)

Try it Yourself »

Lightness

The lightness of a color can be described as how much light you want to give the color, where 0% means no light (black), 50% means 50% light (neither dark nor light) 100% means full lightness (white).

Example

hsl(0, 100%, 0%)
hsl(0, 100%, 25%)
hsl(0, 100%, 50%)
hsl(0, 100%, 75%)
hsl(0, 100%, 90%)
hsl(0, 100%, 100%)

Try it Yourself »

Shades of Gray

Shades of gray are often defined by setting the hue and saturation to 0, and adjust the lightness from 0% to 100% to get darker/lighter shades:

Example

hsl(0, 0%, 20%)
hsl(0, 0%, 30%)
hsl(0, 0%, 40%)
hsl(0, 0%, 60%)
hsl(0, 0%, 70%)
hsl(0, 0%, 90%)

Try it Yourself »

HSLA Color Values

HSLA color values are an extension of HSL color values with an Alpha channel - which specifies the opacity for a color.

An HSLA color value is specified with:

hsla(hue, saturation, lightness, alpha)

The alpha parameter is a number between 0.0 (fully transparent) and 1.0 (not transparent at all):

Experiment by mixing the HSLA values below:

 

HUE

0

SATURATION

100%

LIGHTNESS

50%

ALPHA

0.5

Example

hsla(9, 100%, 64%, 0)
hsla(9, 100%, 64%, 0.2)
hsla(9, 100%, 64%, 0.4)
hsla(9, 100%, 64%, 0.6)
hsla(9, 100%, 64%, 0.8)
hsla(9, 100%, 64%, 1)

Try it Yourself »