Extended VGA Palette with 256 Colors in ANSI Escape Codes#

Structure#

The VGA color palette was introduced with the IBM VGA display adapter in 1987. The 8-bit color space has 256 colors in total, covering:

• 216 colors in a 6x6x6 color cube of red, green, and blue
• 24 shades of gray

It works both with foreground text and background colors. Simply replace the three underscores ___ with any number from 0 to 255:

Sequence Parts#

For example, the sequences \x1b[38;5;123m for turquoise foreground text and \x1b[48;5;123m for turquoise background can be broken down into the following parts:

Examples#

For example, \x1b[38;5;166m is an orange foreground text color, and \x1b[48;5;243m is a light gray background color. When wrapped with \x1b[0m to reset the color, you can write this:

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print("This is \x1b[38;5;166mORANGE\x1b[0m text")
print("This is \x1b[48;5;243mLIGHT GRAY\x1b[0m background")

How it appears in the terminal:

% This is ORANGE text
% This is LIGHT GRAY background

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from colorist import ColorVGA, BgColorVGA

orange = ColorVGA(166)
light_gray = BgColorVGA(243)

print(f"This is {orange}ORANGE{orange.OFF} text")
print(f"This is {light_gray}LIGHT GRAY{light_gray.OFF} background")

% This is ORANGE text
% This is LIGHT GRAY background

Cheat Sheets#

Standard Palette#

Examples#

Let's use color 11 for yellow text and color 14 for cyan background:

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print("This is \x1b[38;5;11mYELLOW\x1b[0m text")
print("This is \x1b[48;5;14CYAN\x1b[0m background")

How it appears in the terminal:

% This is YELLOW text
% This is CYAN background

Gray Scale#

Examples#

Let's use color 244 for light gray text and color 234 for dark gray background:

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print("This is \x1b[38;5;244mLIGHT GRAY\x1b[0m text")
print("This is \x1b[48;5;234mDARK GRAY\x1b[0m background")

How it appears in the terminal:

% This is LIGHT GRAY text
% This is DARK GRAY background

Extended Palette#

Examples#

Let's use color 201 for pink text and color 21 for royal blue background:

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print("This is \x1b[38;5;201mPINK\x1b[0m text")
print("This is \x1b[48;5;21mROYAL BLUE\x1b[0m background")

How it appears in the terminal:

% This is PINK text
% This is ROYAL BLUE background