Understanding Hex vs. RGB

In web design and digital graphics, colors are represented using different color models. The two most common formats are Hexadecimal (Hex) and RGB (Red, Green, Blue). While they represent the same color, they do so in different ways.

What is Hex?

Hexadecimal is a 6-digit code (sometimes 3 for shorthand) prefixed with a hash symbol (#). It is a base-16 number system. The code is divided into three pairs:

First two digits: Red component.
Second two digits: Green component.
Last two digits: Blue component.

For example, #FF0000 represents pure Red because the red component is FF (255 in decimal) and green/blue are 00 (0). It is widely used in CSS because it is concise and easy to copy-paste.

What is RGB?

RGB stands for Red, Green, and Blue. In web design, it is typically expressed as a function: rgb(r, g, b). Each value represents the intensity of that color channel, ranging from 0 (no light) to 255 (full light).

For example, rgb(255, 0, 0) is also pure Red. This format is particularly useful when you need to manipulate color values programmatically, such as when adding transparency (using RGBA) or calculating gradients using JavaScript.

Why Convert?

Different software and coding environments prefer different formats.

CSS/HTML: Generally uses Hex by default, but supports RGB/RGBA.
Design Software (Photoshop/Figma): Often shows values in RGB, but allows you to copy Hex codes.
JavaScript: It is often easier to work with RGB numbers (0-255) for animations and calculations than parsing Hex strings.

Manual Calculation

If you need to convert manually without this Hex to RGB Converter, follow these steps:

Take the first two characters of the Hex code (Red).
Convert this base-16 number to base-10 (decimal).
Repeat for the middle two (Green) and last two (Blue) characters.