The Web-safe palette (or "browser-safe palette") contains the 216 colors that will be displayed relatively consistently on both PC and Mac systems and are therefore "safe" from the standpoint of Web design. While some computer monitors are capable of displaying millions of colors, others are limited to only 256 (the computer's "system palette"). To make matters more complicated, the 256 colors in a PC's system palette are not exactly the same 256 colors in a Mac's system palette.

For this reason, many website designers prefer to stick with the "Web-safe" colors -the 216 colors which are found in the system palette on both the Mac and PC. Do you absolutely have to limit yourself to these 216 colors for your Web pages? No, but if you do decide to use other colors, the viewer's system may have to substitute another color from its own default palette or might combine two or more colors to approximate the color you specified (this is called "dithering"). The result might or might not be acceptable to the viewer, and that is why many Web designers limit themselves to the Web-safe palette.

In the world of Web design, colors are specified as various combinations of different amounts of red, green, and blue. A six character hexadecimal (or "hex") code indicates the amount of red, green, and blue, respectively, that create a particular color when mixed together. Colors in the Web-safe palette are made up of combinations of "00", "33", "66", "99", "CC", or "FF" only, with "00" being the lowest value and "FF" the highest. (There are 6 x 6 x 6, or 216, possible combinations, so there are 216 Web-safe colors).

The Web-safe palette of colors is displayed below. You can use the Color Code Calculators to find the hexadecimal or RGB code for any of the colors in the Web-safe palette. If you are building a website and want it to display consistently across various systems and browsers, use Web-safe colors for any graphics you create and also specify Web-safe colors for your fonts, backgrounds and other colored elements on your Web pages.