CGA color palette
The 16 IBM Color Graphics Adapter colours as hex codes, including the brown quirk, and the magenta/cyan 4-colour graphics palettes early PC games used.
Click a swatch to copy its hex code.
Limits you’re designing around
In 320×200 graphics mode only 4 colours show at once: a background colour plus one of two fixed sets (cyan/magenta/white or green/red/brown), each in low or high intensity.
About the CGA palette
IBM’s CGA card (1981) produced 16 colours from 4 signals: red, green, blue and intensity. Colour 6 would logically be dark yellow, but IBM monitors deliberately halve its green to produce brown (#AA5500).
Most early PC games used the 4-colour graphics mode, which is why so many 1980s DOS games are black, cyan, magenta and white.
The full 16 colours were mainly available in text mode, used for ANSI art and text-mode games.
Draw with it now in the pixel art editor, or convert a picture to these colours.
Hex codes
| # | Colour | Hex | RGB |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | #000000 | 0, 0, 0 | |
| 1 | #0000AA | 0, 0, 170 | |
| 2 | #00AA00 | 0, 170, 0 | |
| 3 | #00AAAA | 0, 170, 170 | |
| 4 | #AA0000 | 170, 0, 0 | |
| 5 | #AA00AA | 170, 0, 170 | |
| 6 | #AA5500 | 170, 85, 0 | |
| 7 | #AAAAAA | 170, 170, 170 | |
| 8 | #555555 | 85, 85, 85 | |
| 9 | #5555FF | 85, 85, 255 | |
| 10 | #55FF55 | 85, 255, 85 | |
| 11 | #55FFFF | 85, 255, 255 | |
| 12 | #FF5555 | 255, 85, 85 | |
| 13 | #FF55FF | 255, 85, 255 | |
| 14 | #FFFF55 | 255, 255, 85 | |
| 15 | #FFFFFF | 255, 255, 255 |
Other palettes
Frequently asked questions
How many colours are in the CGA palette?
This version has 16 colours. In 320×200 graphics mode only 4 colours show at once: a background colour plus one of two fixed sets (cyan/magenta/white or green/red/brown), each in low or high intensity.
How do I use the CGA palette in PixelMint?
Open the editor and pick “CGA” from the palette menu beside the canvas. To convert an existing picture to these colours, choose CGA in the image to pixel art converter.
Which file should I download?
GPL for Aseprite, GIMP, Krita and Inkscape; HEX for Lospec-compatible tools and quick copy-paste; PNG for anything else (and for loading as a palette image in Aseprite or Pyxel Edit).