color-scheme

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since February 2022.

The color-scheme CSS property allows an element to indicate which color schemes it can comfortably be rendered in. User agents change the following aspects of the UI chrome to match the used color scheme:

  • The color of the canvas surface.
  • The default colors of scrollbars and other interaction UI.
  • The default colors of form controls.
  • The default colors of other browser-provided UI, such as "spellcheck" underlines.

Component authors must use the prefers-color-scheme media feature to support the color schemes on the rest of the elements.

Common choices for operating system color schemes are "light" and "dark", or "day mode" and "night mode". When a user selects one of these color schemes, the operating system makes adjustments to the user interface. This includes form controls, scrollbars, and the used values of CSS system colors.

Try it

Syntax

css
color-scheme: normal;
color-scheme: light;
color-scheme: dark;
color-scheme: light dark;
color-scheme: only light;

/* Global values */
color-scheme: inherit;
color-scheme: initial;
color-scheme: revert;
color-scheme: revert-layer;
color-scheme: unset;

The color-scheme property's value must be one of the following keywords.

Values

normal

Indicates that the element can be rendered using the page's color scheme settings. If the page does not have a color scheme set, the element is rendered using the page's default color settings.

light

Indicates that the element can be rendered using the operating system light color scheme.

dark

Indicates that the element can be rendered using the operating system dark color scheme.

only

Forbids the user agent from overriding the color scheme for the element.

Can be used to turn off color overrides caused by Chrome's Auto Dark Theme, by applying color-scheme: only light; on a specific element or :root.

Formal definition

Initial valuenormal
Applies toall elements and text
Inheritedyes
Computed valueas specified
Animation typediscrete

Formal syntax

color-scheme = 
  normal                                       |
  [ light | dark | <custom-ident> ]+ && only?

Examples

Declaring color scheme preferences

To opt the entire page into the user's color scheme preferences, declare color-scheme on the :root element.

css
:root {
  color-scheme: light dark;
}

To opt in specific elements to the user's color scheme preferences, declare color-scheme on those elements.

css
header {
  color-scheme: only light;
}
main {
  color-scheme: light dark;
}
footer {
  color-scheme: only dark;
}

Styling based on color schemes

To style elements based on color scheme preferences, use the prefers-color-scheme media query. The example below opts in the entire page to using both light and dark operating system color schemes via the color-scheme property, and then uses prefers-color-scheme to specify the desired foreground and background colors for individual elements in those color schemes.

css
:root {
  color-scheme: light dark;
}

@media (prefers-color-scheme: light) {
  .element {
    color: black;
    background-color: white;
  }
}

@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
  .element {
    color: white;
    background-color: black;
  }
}

Alternatively, use the experimental light-dark() <color> function to set the foreground and background colors for the different color schemes using a more compact code structure:

css
:root {
  color-scheme: light dark;
}

.element {
  color: light-dark(black, white);
  background-color: light-dark(white, black);
}

Specifications

Specification
CSS Color Adjustment Module Level 1
# color-scheme-prop

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also