- How to change link color in CSS?
- By using «a» selector
- Example
- Change the link color in CSS
- By using «id» and «class» selector
- Example
- Change link color in CSS
- By using «:hover» pseudo-class
- Example
- Change link color in CSS
- Conclusion
- How to Change Link Colors with CSS
- Inline method
- Example of changing a link color with the inline method:
- Result
- Internal method
- Example of changing the link color with the internal method:
- Example of using different link states:
- How to change the colors of the hyperlink underline and anchor text
- Example of changing a hyperlink underline and anchor text color:
- Example of styling links with the mentioned methods:
- Example of changing the link color with the «inherit» value of the color property:
- Example of styling links with the CSS text-decoration-color property:
- External method
- CSS Links
- Styling Links
- Example
- Example
- Text Decoration
- Example
- Background Color
- Example
- Link Buttons
- Example
- More Examples
- Example
- Example
- Example
- COLOR PICKER
- Report Error
- Thank You For Helping Us!
- How to change the color of links on a web page
- Understanding the different types of hyperlinks
- CSS link color example
- HTML body tag example
- Related information
How to change link color in CSS?
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), is a powerful language used to control the visual presentation of web pages. One of the most important things we can do with CSS is changing the color of links on the webpage. In this article, we will cover different ways to change the color of links in CSS.
By using «a» selector
This is the basic way to change the color of links in CSS. This selector targets all links on a webpage. The color property is used to change the color of the text of the link. Here is an example −
Example
Here is an example to change the link color using “a” selector in CSS.
body < text-align:center; >aChange the link color in CSS
link to tutorialspoint
By using «id» and «class» selector
If we want to change the color of just specific links, we can use a class or ID selector. For example, if we have a class of «special-link» on some links, We will use the following code to change the color of those links this −
Example
Here is an example to change the link color using “ID” and “Class” selector in CSS.
body < text-align:center; >#special-link < color: red; >.special-linkChange link color in CSS
Change the link color with ID Selector in CSS Change the link color with CLASS Selector in CSS
By using «:hover» pseudo-class
To change the color of a link when it is hovered over, we use the «:hover» pseudo-class. For example
This CSS will change the color of link to red when it is hovered over.
Example
Here is an example to change the link color using “.hover” pseudo-class in CSS.
body < text-align:center; >a < color: blue; >a:hoverChange link color in CSS
Change the link color with Mouse-hover in CSS
Conclusion
Changing the color of links in CSS is a simple and effective way to enhance the visual of the website. By using selectors, pseudo-classes, and properties, we can target specific links or link states and change their color to match the design.
How to Change Link Colors with CSS
There are three ways of changing the link color: inline, internal and external.
Inline method
Add the style attribute directly to the hyperlink code and specify the color property through the style attribute, then give a color value to it.
Example of changing a link color with the inline method:
html> html> head> title>Title of the document title> head> body> p>Visit our a href="https://www.w3docs.com/" style="color: #8ebf42">website a>. p> body> html>
Result
Internal method
Example of changing the link color with the internal method:
html> html> head> title>Title of the document title> style> a < color: #8ebf42; > style> head> body> p>Visit our a href="https://www.w3docs.com/">website a>. p> body> html>
There are 4 link states that links can be styled depending on what state they are in:
- a:link — a normal, unvisited link,
- a:visited — a link the user has visited,
- a:hover — a link when a user mouses over it,
- a:active — the moment a link is clicked.
When setting the style for several link states, follow these rules:
Example of using different link states:
html> html> head> title>Title of the document title> style> /* unvisited link */ a:link < color: #ccc; > /* visited link */ a:visited < color: #095484; > /* mouse over link */ a:hover < color: #8ebf42; > /* selected link */ a:active < color: #800000; > style> head> body> p>Visit our a href="https://www.w3docs.com/">website a>. p> body> html>
How to change the colors of the hyperlink underline and anchor text
To change the underline color, first of all, you need to remove it with the «none» value of the text-decoration property and set the «none» value, then add the border-bottom property with the width (in this case, used as a hyperlink underline width) and border-style (solid, dotted, or dashed) properties. For the anchor text color, use the color property.
Example of changing a hyperlink underline and anchor text color:
html> html> head> title>Title of the document title> style> a < text-decoration: none; > a:link < color: #000; border-bottom: 1px solid #ff0000; > a:visited < color: #e600e6; border-bottom: 1px solid #b3b3b3; > a:hover < color: #2d8653; border-bottom: 1px solid #000099; > style> head> body> p>Visit our a href="https://www.w3docs.com/">website a>. p> body> html>
Example of styling links with the mentioned methods:
html> html> head> title>Title of the document title> style> a.one:link < color: #ccc; > a.one:visited < color: #095484; > a.one:hover < color: #8ebf42; > a.two:link < color: #ccc; > a.two:visited < color: #095484; > a.two:hover < font-size: 150%; > a.three:link < color: #ccc; > a.three:visited < color: #095484; > a.three:hover < background: #8ebf42; > a.four:link < color: #ccc; > a.four:visited < color: #095484; > a.four:hover < font-family: monospace; > a.five:link < color: #095484; text-decoration: none; > a.five:visited < color: #095484; text-decoration: none; > a.five:hover < text-decoration: overline underline; > style> head> body> p>Mouse over the links and watch how they will be changed: p> p> a class="one" href="#">This link changes color a> p> p> a class="two" href="#">This link changes font-size a> p> p> a class="three" href="#">This link changes background-color a> p> p> a class="four" href="#">This link changes font-family a> p> p> a class="five" href="#">This link changes text-decoration a> p> body> html>
Now, we’ll demonstrate another example, where we use the color property with its «inherit» value. This will make the element take the color of its parent.
Example of changing the link color with the «inherit» value of the color property:
html> html> head> title>Title of the document title> style> p < color: green; > p a < color: inherit; > style> head> body> h1>Example h1> a href="https://www.w3docs.com/">W3docs.com a> p>Visit our a href="https://www.w3docs.com/">W3docs.com a> website. p> body> html>
Example of styling links with the CSS text-decoration-color property:
html> html> head> title>Title of the document title> style> a < text-decoration-color: grey; > a:link < color: #777777; > a:hover < color: #2d8653; > style> head> body> p>Visit our a href="https://www.w3docs.com/">website a>. p> body> html>
External method
Using external stylesheets you can take control of all the hyperlinks of your site. With external stylesheets, many attractive hyperlink effects can be created to develop the look of your website.
With the external method, you’ll link your web pages to an external .css file that can be created by any text editor in your device. This is a more efficient method, especially when you need to style a large website. You can change your whole site at once by editing one .css file.
CSS Links
With CSS, links can be styled in many different ways.
Styling Links
Links can be styled with any CSS property (e.g. color , font-family , background , etc.).
Example
In addition, links can be styled differently depending on what state they are in.
The four links states are:
- a:link — a normal, unvisited link
- a:visited — a link the user has visited
- a:hover — a link when the user mouses over it
- a:active — a link the moment it is clicked
Example
/* unvisited link */
a:link color: red;
>
/* visited link */
a:visited color: green;
>
/* mouse over link */
a:hover color: hotpink;
>
/* selected link */
a:active color: blue;
>
When setting the style for several link states, there are some order rules:
Text Decoration
The text-decoration property is mostly used to remove underlines from links:
Example
a:visited text-decoration: none;
>
a:hover text-decoration: underline;
>
a:active text-decoration: underline;
>
Background Color
The background-color property can be used to specify a background color for links:
Example
a:link <
background-color: yellow;
>
a:visited background-color: cyan;
>
a:hover background-color: lightgreen;
>
a:active background-color: hotpink;
>
Link Buttons
This example demonstrates a more advanced example where we combine several CSS properties to display links as boxes/buttons:
Example
a:link, a:visited <
background-color: #f44336;
color: white;
padding: 14px 25px;
text-align: center;
text-decoration: none;
display: inline-block;
>
a:hover, a:active background-color: red;
>
More Examples
Example
This example demonstrates how to add other styles to hyperlinks:
Example
Another example of how to create link boxes/buttons:
a:link, a:visited <
background-color: white;
color: black;
border: 2px solid green;
padding: 10px 20px;
text-align: center;
text-decoration: none;
display: inline-block;
>
a:hover, a:active background-color: green;
color: white;
>
Example
This example demonstrates the different types of cursors (can be useful for links):
COLOR PICKER
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How to change the color of links on a web page
Below are the steps on how you can change the color of the links shown on your web page using HTML and CSS. Although the link colors can be done with the HTML BODY tag, we always recommend doing any styling settings in CSS as shown below.
When defining the color of any web page element, you may need to use HTML color codes. For major colors, you can also specify the names of those colors instead of using the color codes, for example, red, blue, green, and black instead of using their respected color code values.
Understanding the different types of hyperlinks
Hyperlinks are special elements on your page, because they are interactive. To indicate that they are interactive, they are colored differently depending on their state. A hyperlink has three special colors, in addition to its default blue color, which represent three different states:
- Visited link — The color of a visited link. If a hyperlink is this color, the user can expect that clicking the link takes them to a page they’ve already seen. Purple is the default hyperlink color for a visited link.
- Hover link — The color when the mouse is hovering over a link. If a hyperlink is this color, the user can expect that pressing the left mouse button (clicking), then releasing the button, causes the link to be visited. Hover color is the same for both «Active» and «Visited» links.
- Active Link — The color of the link when being clicked. When the user sees this color, they can expect that releasing the mouse button causes the browser to visit the link.
See our hyperlink definition for further information and related questions to hyperlinks.
CSS link color example
In the CSS example below, we are setting the hyperlink colors to resemble what is shown on this page. First, all anchors are set to the #2c87f0 (shade of blue), #636 a shade of purple, and all hover and active links color:#c33 (red). The below code can be added to the CSS style element or in your .css file.
a < color: #2c87f0; >a:visited < color: #636; >a:hover, a:active, a:focus
If your page isn’t using CSS, the steps below show how to do this in the HTML BODY tag. However, as mentioned earlier, we highly recommend using the above CSS code instead of the body tag. You can add the above code into a CSS file and link all your web pages to that CSS file. Then, you could change the background-color values in that one CSS file to instantly change the background color of all pages linking to it.
HTML body tag example
In some very rare situations, it may not be possible to use CSS. For those situations, you can also define the background color, text color, link color, and other values in the HTML body tag as shown below.
Below are the descriptions of each of the HTML attributes in the body tag.
TEXT = The color of text.
LINK = The color of links.
VLINK = Visited link color.
ALINK = Color of the active link or the color the link changes to when clicked.
BGCOLOR = The page background color.
Related information
- How to create multicolor links in HTML.
- How to create an HTML link on a web page.
- How to create a link with no underline in HTML.
- See the CSS, HTML tag, and hyperlink pages for further information.
- See our HTML color code page for a full listing of color codes.
- CSS and HTML color help and support.