COLOR

Sets the default console foreground and background colours.

Syntax
      COLOR [background][foreground]

Colour attributes are specified by 2 of the following hex digits. Each digit can be any of the following values:

0 = Black
8 = Gray

1 = Blue
9 = Light Blue

2 = Green
A = Light Green

3 = Aqua
B = Light Aqua

4 = Red
C = Light Red

5 = Purple
D = Light Purple

6 = Yellow
E = Light Yellow

7 = White
F = Bright White

If no argument is given, COLOR restores the colour to what it was when CMD.EXE started.

Colour values are assigned in the following order:

The DefaultColor registry value.
The CMD /T command line switch
The current colour settings when cmd was launched

The COLOR command sets ERRORLEVEL to 1 if an attempt is made to execute the COLOR command with a foreground and background colour that are the same.

Examples:

COLOR 07, white on black is the default.

"COLOR 00" is an invalid option and will set %ERRORLEVEL% to 1 (this fails on some early builds of NT 4 - see verify for an alternative method of raising an error)

The COLOR command will change the color of all the text in the window, to change individual lines or words you need to use PowerShell (Vista or Win XP) like this: Write-Host -ForeGroundColor Red "some text in red" -nonewline

"How much more black could this be?" and the answer is "None...none more black." - Spinal Tap

Related commands:

CMD - Start a new CMD shell
Write-Host

Equivalent Linux BASH commands:

dircolors - Colour setup for `ls'