What are CSS named colors?

CSS named colors are a set of predefined color keywords that browsers and design tools recognize by name — words like tomato, steelblue, cornflowerblue, or rebeccapurple. There are 147 standard named colors defined in the CSS Color Level 4 specification (also known as the W3CX11 color list). Each name maps to a specific hex value, making it easy to reference colors in code without remembering exact RGB or hex values.

Named colors have been part of HTML and CSS since the early days of the web. Over time the list grew from the original 16 basic colors to the full set recognized today. Despite the abundance of hex codes and custom properties in modern web development, named colors remain popular for readability, quick prototyping, and educational purposes.

Tool description

Color Name Finder takes any color you choose — via a color picker or hex input — and identifies the closest CSS named color. When the selected color is an exact CSS color, it shows a perfect match. Otherwise it calculates the perceptual color distance to every named color using the CIEDE2000 algorithm and returns the nearest one, along with a numeric distance score indicating how close the match is.

Features

  • Perceptual color matching — uses the CIEDE2000 color difference formula, the same metric used in professional color science, to find the most visually similar named color rather than just the nearest hex value.
  • Exact match detection — instantly recognizes any of the 147 standard CSS named colors and reports a zero-distance exact match.
  • ΔE distance score — shows a numeric delta E value so you can judge how close the nearest name is; values below 2 are generally imperceptible to the human eye.