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2.7.3 HSL Colors

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:

Example 1: HTML HSL color values

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.

Example 2: HSL Saturation

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) 100% means full lightness (white).

Example 3: HSL Lightness

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:

Example 4: Grey HSL color values

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):

Example 5: HSLA color values