The text-decoration-color
CSS property sets the color of decorations added to text by text-decoration-line
.
The color applies to decorations, such as underlines, overlines, strikethroughs, and wavy lines like those used to mark misspellings, in the scope of the property's value.
The source for this interactive example is stored in a GitHub repository. If you'd like to contribute to the interactive examples project, please clone https://github.com/mdn/interactive-examples and send us a pull request.
CSS does not provide a direct mechanism for specifying a unique color for each line type. This effect can nevertheless be achieved by nesting elements, applying a different line type to each element (with the text-decoration-line
property), and specifying the line color (with text-decoration-color
) on a per‐element basis.
When setting multiple line-decoration properties at once, it may be more convenient to use the text-decoration
shorthand property instead.
Syntax
/* <color> values */ text-decoration-color: currentColor; text-decoration-color: red; text-decoration-color: #00ff00; text-decoration-color: rgba(255, 128, 128, 0.5); text-decoration-color: transparent; /* Global values */ text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-color: unset;
Values
<color>
- The color of the line decoration.
Formal syntax
<color>where
<color> = <rgb()> | <rgba()> | <hsl()> | <hsla()> | <hex-color> | <named-color> | currentcolor | <deprecated-system-color>
where
<rgb()> = rgb( <percentage>{3} [ / <alpha-value> ]? ) | rgb( <number>{3} [ / <alpha-value> ]? ) | rgb( <percentage>#{3} , <alpha-value>? ) | rgb( <number>#{3} , <alpha-value>? )
<rgba()> = rgba( <percentage>{3} [ / <alpha-value> ]? ) | rgba( <number>{3} [ / <alpha-value> ]? ) | rgba( <percentage>#{3} , <alpha-value>? ) | rgba( <number>#{3} , <alpha-value>? )
<hsl()> = hsl( <hue> <percentage> <percentage> [ / <alpha-value> ]? ) | hsl( <hue>, <percentage>, <percentage>, <alpha-value>? )
<hsla()> = hsla( <hue> <percentage> <percentage> [ / <alpha-value> ]? ) | hsla( <hue>, <percentage>, <percentage>, <alpha-value>? )where
<alpha-value> = <number> | <percentage>
<hue> = <number> | <angle>
Examples
<p>This paragraph has <s>some erroneous text</s> inside it that I want to call attention to.</p>
p {
text-decoration-line: underline;
text-decoration-color: cyan;
}
s {
text-decoration-line: line-through
;
text-decoration-color: red;
text-decoration-style: wavy;
}
Accessibility concerns
It is important to ensure that the contrast ratio between the color of the text, the background the text is placed over, and the text decoration line is high enough that people experiencing low vision conditions will be able to read the content of the page. Color contrast ratio is determined by comparing the luminosity of the text and background color values.
Color alone should not be used to convey meaning. For example, change of text and text-decoration-color alone is not enouch to indicate a link has focus.
- WebAIM: Color Contrast Checker
- MDN Understanding WCAG, Guideline 1.4 explanations
- Understanding Success Criterion 1.4.3 | W3C Understanding WCAG 2.0
Specifications
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
CSS Text Decoration Module Level 3 The definition of 'text-decoration-color' in that specification. |
Candidate Recommendation | Initial definition. The text-decoration property is now a shorthand to define multiple related properties. |
Initial value | currentcolor |
---|---|
Applies to | all elements. It also applies to ::first-letter and ::first-line . |
Inherited | no |
Media | visual |
Computed value | computed color |
Animation type | a color |
Canonical order | the unique non-ambiguous order defined by the formal grammar |
Browser compatibility
Desktop | Mobile | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
text-decoration-color | Chrome Full support 57 | Edge No support No | Firefox
Full support
36
| IE No support No | Opera Full support 44 | Safari
Full support
12.1
| WebView Android Full support 57 | Chrome Android Full support 57 | Firefox Android
Full support
36
| Opera Android Full support 43 | Safari iOS
Full support
12.2
| Samsung Internet Android Full support 7.0 |
Legend
- Full support
- Full support
- No support
- No support
- Requires a vendor prefix or different name for use.
- Requires a vendor prefix or different name for use.
See also
- When setting multiple line-decoration properties at once, it may be more convenient to use the
text-decoration
shorthand property instead. - The
<color>
data type - Other color-related properties:
background-color
,border-color
,outline-color
,text-decoration-color
,text-emphasis-color
,text-shadow
,caret-color
, andcolumn-rule-color
- Applying color to HTML elements using CSS