text-decoration-color

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since January 2020.

The text-decoration-color CSS property sets the color of decorations added to text by text-decoration-line.

The color applies to decorations, such as underlines, overlines, strikethroughs, and wavy lines like those used to mark misspellings, in the scope of the property's value.

Try it

text-decoration-color: red;

text-decoration-color: #21ff21;

text-decoration-color: rgb(255, 90, 255);

text-decoration-color: hsl(70, 100%, 40%);

text-decoration-color: currentColor;

<section id="default-example">
  <p>
    I'd far rather be
    <span class="transition-all" id="example-element">happy than right</span>
    any day.
  </p>
</section>

p {
  font: 1.5em sans-serif;
}

#example-element {
  text-decoration-line: underline;
}

CSS does not provide a direct mechanism for specifying a unique color for each line type. This effect can nevertheless be achieved by nesting elements, applying a different line type to each element (with the text-decoration-line property), and specifying the line color (with text-decoration-color) on a per-element basis.

Syntax

/* <color> values */
text-decoration-color: currentcolor;
text-decoration-color: red;
text-decoration-color: #00ff00;
text-decoration-color: rgb(255 128 128 / 50%);
text-decoration-color: transparent;

/* Global values */
text-decoration-color: inherit;
text-decoration-color: initial;
text-decoration-color: revert;
text-decoration-color: revert-layer;
text-decoration-color: unset;

Values

<color>: The color of the line decoration.

Accessibility

It is important to ensure that the contrast ratio between the color of the text, the background the text is placed over, and the text decoration line is high enough that people experiencing low vision conditions will be able to read the content of the page. Color contrast ratio is determined by comparing the luminosity of the text and background color values.

Color alone should not be used to convey meaning. For example, change of text and text-decoration-color alone is not enough to indicate a link has focus.

Formal definition

Initial value	`currentcolor`
Applies to	all elements. It also applies to `::first-letter` and `::first-line`.
Inherited	no
Computed value	computed color
Animation type	a color

Formal syntax

text-decoration-color = 
  <color>

Examples

Basic example

<p>
  This paragraph has <s>some erroneous text</s> inside it that I want to call
  attention to.
</p>

p {
  text-decoration-line: underline;
  text-decoration-color: cyan;
}

s {
  text-decoration-line: line-through;
  text-decoration-color: red;
  text-decoration-style: wavy;
}

Specifications

Specification
CSS Text Decoration Module Level 3 # text-decoration-color-property

Browser compatibility

	Desktop					Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Opera	Safari	Chrome Android	Firefox for Android	Opera Android	Safari on IOS	Samsung Internet	WebView Android
`text-decoration-color`	57	79	366–39	44	12.18	57	366–39	43	12.28	7.0	57