textual/docs/styles/background.md

Background

The background style sets the background color of a widget.

Syntax

--8<-- "docs/snippets/syntax_block_start.md" background: <color> [<percentage>]; --8<-- "docs/snippets/syntax_block_end.md"

The background style requires a <color> optionally followed by <percentage> to specify the color's opacity (clamped between 0% and 100%).

Examples

Basic usage

This example creates three widgets and applies a different background to each.

=== "Output"

```{.textual path="docs/examples/styles/background.py"}
```

=== "background.py"

```python
--8<-- "docs/examples/styles/background.py"
```

=== "background.tcss"

```css hl_lines="9 13 17"
--8<-- "docs/examples/styles/background.tcss"
```

Different opacity settings

The next example creates ten widgets laid out side by side to show the effect of setting different percentages for the background color's opacity.

=== "Output"

```{.textual path="docs/examples/styles/background_transparency.py"}
```

=== "background_transparency.py"

```python
--8<-- "docs/examples/styles/background_transparency.py"
```

=== "background_transparency.tcss"

```css hl_lines="2 6 10 14 18 22 26 30 34 38"
--8<-- "docs/examples/styles/background_transparency.tcss"
```

CSS

/* Blue background */
background: blue;

/* 20% red background */
background: red 20%;

/* RGB color */
background: rgb(100, 120, 200);

/* HSL color */
background: hsl(290, 70%, 80%);

Python

You can use the same syntax as CSS, or explicitly set a Color object for finer-grained control.

# Set blue background
widget.styles.background = "blue"
# Set through HSL model
widget.styles.background = "hsl(351,32%,89%)"

from textual.color import Color
# Set with a color object by parsing a string
widget.styles.background = Color.parse("pink")
widget.styles.background = Color.parse("#FF00FF")
# Set with a color object instantiated directly
widget.styles.background = Color(120, 60, 100)

See also

• background-tint to blend a color with the background.
• color to set the color of text in a widget.