HSL Value
HSL stands for hue, saturation, and lightness.
In CSS, 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 (or 360) is red 120 is green 240 is blue
- 0 (or 360) is red
- 120 is green
- 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; 0% is black, 50% is neither light or dark, 100% is white.
Experiment by mixing the HSL values below:
HUE
SATURATION
LIGHTNESS
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.
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) and 100% means full lightness (white).
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:
HSLA Value
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
SATURATION
LIGHTNESS
ALPHA