Palettes
Ignite UI for Angular exposes CSS variables that allow you to update the colors in your application in a consistent way.
Overview
Ignite UI for Angular exposes over 80 color variants as CSS variables for 8 base colors - primary
, secondary
, surface
, gray
, info
, success
, warn
, error
.
The primary
, secondary
, and gray
colors follow the 2014 Material Design Color Palette. This means these colors include the following variants:
All | Primary & Secondary Only | ||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
50 | 100 | 200 | 300 | 400 | 500 | 600 | 700 | 800 | 900 | A100 | A200 | A400 | A700 |
As the table above shows, the gray
color doesn't include the A100
, A200
, A400
, and A700
variants, while the primary
and secondary
colors contain all 14 color variants. We include 5 additional colors that are not part of the 2014 Material Design Color Palette - info
, success
, warn
, error
and surface
.
On top of the aforementioned colors, we also include Level AA WCAG compliant contrast
colors for each color variant. This means that you can safely use the corresponding contrast
color variants as foreground colors for the base color variant.
Contrast colors are generated at build-time by the Sass theming engine based on the main variables color (primary, secondary, etc.).
Here's an excerpt of the primary
variable color as declared in the Light Material Palette:
:root {
//...
--ig-primary-500: #09f;
--ig-primary-500-contrast: black;
--ig-primary-600: hsl(from var(--ig-primary-500) h calc(s * 1.26) calc(l * 0.89));
--ig-primary-600-contrast: black;
--ig-primary-700: hsl(from var(--ig-primary-500) h calc(s * 1.26) calc(l * 0.81));
//...
--ig-secondary-400: hsl(from var(--ig-secondary-500) h calc(s * 0.875) calc(l * 1.08));
--ig-secondary-400-contrast: black;
--ig-secondary-500: #df1b74;
--ig-secondary-500-contrast: white;
--ig-secondary-600: hsl(from var(--ig-secondary-500) h calc(s * 1.26) calc(l * 0.89));
--ig-secondary-600-contrast: white;
//...
}
css
All primary color variants are derived from one base variable color variant --ig-primary-500
. The same goes for the other color variables --ig-secondary-500
, --ig-surface-500
, etc. The other variants are generated through the relative color function hsl()
which takes the main variable color variant 500
and changes it's staturation
and lightness
according to the variable variant which is assigned on (600
,700
, etc.). We decided to use this approach as it allows us to modify all variants of the primary
, secondary
, surface
and other colors at runtime.
Because the contrast colors are not generated at CSS runtime like the rest, if we change the main color variant(500
), the contrast color would not be updated. We would need to change them manually. This behavior will be improved upon in an upcoming release, where the contrast colors will also be calculated at CSS runtime.
Defining Palettes
If you wanted to change the color variants for a color from the palette, you can do so by overriding its 500
color variant. For instance, changing the primary colors is as easy as writing:
:root {
--ig-primary-500: #09f;
}
css
This will automatically update all the other primary variants.
You will notice that color variants for each color are monochromatic. This is because all color variants are generated with the relative color function hsl()
.
Scoping
We've seen that overriding colors in the palette is relatively easy. We can update the global palette by scoping color variants to the :root
selector in the styles.css
file of our application:
Let's say your corporate primary color is #9f349c
and you want to create primary variants for it. All you need to do is to replace the --ig-primary-500
variable with the desired color in any color value type - RGB, HEX, etc.
:root {
--ig-primary-500: #9f349c;
}
css
This will automatically alter each primary color variant.
Apart from having a single global palette, you can also create several palettes scoped to other CSS selectors. For example, we can have a blue and red palette scoped to class selectors:
/* styles.css */
.blue-theme {
--ig-primary-500: #0008ff;
}
.red-theme {
--ig-primary-500: #ff0400;
}
css
<app-component class="blue-theme"></app-component>
html
Then you can simply overhaul the colors in your application by changing the value of the class attribute from blue-theme
to red-theme
.
This approach works for overriding palette colors for individual components as well. In some instances, you don't want to create multiple palettes, but you would want to change a palette color used in component.
Let's look at the material avatar component theme. It uses the 400 variant of the gray color for its background. Now, we can customize the theme by overriding the property responsible for setting the background, or we could change the disabled background color for it by overriding the gray 400 palette color:
igx-avatar {
--ig-gray-400: #efefef;
}
css
Dark vs. Light
The colors that have the biggest impact on foreground and background colors are gray
and surface
. These two colors will be displayed against one another in most cases. For that reason the surface
color should always contrast the gray
.
Palettes in Ignite UI for Angular dictate whether a theme is going to be light or dark. The two colors that have the biggest impact on that are gray
and surface
. See, the gray
color variants in all themes are based on either a very light color shade, like #fff
, or a very dark one like #222
. Light themes have gray
variants based on dark shades of gray, while dark themes are the opposite - all gray
variants are a shade of white. These gray
colors will be displayed against another color, usually the surface
color. The surface
color should always be on the opposite end of the gray
in the gray scale to ensure themes look good.
To make this a bit clearer, below is a list of some gray
and surface
color variants in both a light and a dark theme;
Material Light:
:root {
//...
/* surface is set to light color*/
--ig-surface-500: white;
//...
/* grays are based on dark gray to contrast the surface color */
--ig-gray-500: hsl(0, 0%, 62%);
//...
}
css
Material Dark:
:root {
//...
/* surface is set to dark color*/
--ig-surface-500: #222;
//...
/* grays are based on light gray to contrast the surface color */
--ig-gray-500: hsl(0, 0%, 74%);
//...
}
css
Be mindful when changing the gray
and surface
color variants as they are used in most components and have a big impact on their overall look and feel.
Other Colors
So far we've covered the primary
, secondary
, gray
, and surface
color variants and how you can override them. There are four more colors - info
, success
, warn
, and error
. They are usually used to set the colors in different states. For example, the igx-input-group
component uses these colors in its input validation states.
They can be changed as the other color variants, all we need to do it to set the 500
variant and all of the other varints will be generated.
:root {
--ig-info-500: #1377d5;
--ig-success-500: #4eb862;
--ig-warn-500: #faa419;
--ig-error-500: #ff134a;
}
css
Additional Resources
Related topics:
Our community is active and always welcoming to new ideas.