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CSS•CSS Foundations

CSS Backgrounds

Overview

The CSS background properties are used to add background effects for elements. In these chapters, you will learn about the following CSS background properties:

Formula

background - color background - image background - repeat background - attachment background - position background

(shorthand property)

CSS background-color

Formula

The background - color property specifies the background color of an element.

Example

The background color of a page is set like this:

body {
background-color: lightblue;
}

With CSS, a color is most often specified by:

Formula

a valid color name - like "red"
a HEX value - like "#ff0000"
an RGB value - like "rgb(255,0,0)"

Look at

CSS Color Values for a complete list of possible color values.

Other Elements

You can set the background color for any HTML elements:

Example

Formula

Here, the < h1 >, < p >, and < div > elements will have different background colors:
h1 {
background-color: green;
}
div {
background-color: lightblue;
}
p {

Formula

background - color:
yellow;
}

Formula

Opacity / Transparency

The opacity property specifies the opacity/transparency of an element. It can take a value from 0.0 - 1.0. The lower value, the more transparent: opacity 1 opacity 0.6 opacity 0.3 opacity 0.1

Example div {
background-color: green;
opacity: 0.3;
}

Note:

When using the opacity property to add transparency to the background of an element, all of its child elements inherit the same transparency. This can make the text inside a fully transparent element hard to read.

Transparency using RGBA

If you do not want to apply opacity to child elements, like in our example above, use

Rgba

color values. The following example sets the opacity for the background color and not the text: 100% opacity 60% opacity 30% opacity 10% opacity

You learned from our

CSS Colors Chapter, that you can use RGB as a color value. In addition to RGB, you can use an RGB color value with an alpha channel (RGB A

Formula

) - which specifies the opacity for a color.

An RGBA color value is specified with: rgba(red, green, blue, alpha ). The alpha parameter is a number between 0.0 (fully transparent) and 1.0 (fully opaque).

Tip:

You will learn more about RGBA Colors in our CSS Colors Chapter.

Example div {
background: rgba(0, 128, 0, 0.3) /* Green background with 30% opacity */
}

The CSS Background Color Property

Property

Description background-color

Sets the background color of an element

Video: CSS Background Color

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CSS HSL Colors

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CSS Background Image Repeat