HSL stands for hue, saturation, and lightness.
HSLA color values are an extension of HSL with an Alpha channel (opacity).
HSL Color Values
In HTML, 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 is red, 120 is green, and 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 value. 0% is black, and 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 adjusting the lightness from 0% to 100% to get darker/lighter shades:
HSLA Color Values
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