CSS color brightness contrast using JavaScript

2009-08-05T00:00:00-07:00

Dealing with foreground/background color contrast can be a bit tricky specially when you are a not a color-theory savvy or when using CSS color names as listed by Douglas Crockford’s page.
The most common problem is when you have to place a label over a color you don’t know on beforehand, it can either be an arbitrary color chosen by the user or come from a random-color generator function and sometimes from a long list in a datasource. Usually you have to decide between labeling it in black or white. When a color is too bright, a black label over it might be the best choice but definitely won’t be good over a very dark color, it can be really hard to read it, a white label should work better.

W3C advises:

Ensure that foreground and background color combinations provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having color deficits or when viewed on a black and white screen.

And suggests the following algorithm* to calculate the perceived brightness of a color:

brightness = ((REDvalue X 299) + (GREENvalue X 587) + (BLUEvalue X 114)) / 1000

If the perceived brightness is greater than 125, choose black, otherwise white.

* This algorithm is taken from a formula for converting RGB values to YIQ values.

On Doug’s CSS color names page, he listed all color names alphabetically in two columns, the first one uses a black label over the colors and the second one uses white. I have created a Greasemonkey script that adds a third column to that page applying this brightness algorithm that decides between black and white which one works better over each color in the list. You can get and install the script here.

Doug’s CSS color names page with the Greasemonkey script

To get the RGB values from an element’s background color you can use the window.getComputedStyle** method as follows:

var element = document.getElementById('foobar'),
    rgb = window.getComputedStyle(element, null).backgroundColor;

** Use currentStyle on IE, see “Get Styles on PPK’s QuirksMode”

This will bring the RBG values list string in the format: “rgb(255, 255, 255)” for a white background color. You can use a regular expression and apply it over the RGB string in order to parse its values:

var re = /rgb\((\d+), (\d+), (\d+)\)/;
rgb = re.exec(rgb);

The rgb variable now has an array with the split background RGB color values, you can get the separated R, G and B values from the index 1 of the array:

var
    r = parseInt(rgb[1], 10),
    g = parseInt(rgb[2], 10),
    b = parseInt(rgb[3], 10);

Finally calculate the color brightness:

var brightness = (r*299 + g*587 + b*114) / 1000;
if (brightness > 125) {
    // use black
} else {
    // use white
}

JavaScript Rules - css

CSS color brightness contrast using JavaScript