material-components_material-components-android/docs/theming/Color.md

Color Theming

The Material 3 color theming system can be used to create a color scheme that reflects your brand or style.

The Material 3 color theming system uses an organized approach to apply colors to your UI. In this system, theme colors are selected to express different parts of a UI. Material components use these theme colors and their variations to style their individual backgrounds, text, and more.

Design & API Documentation

• Material Design guidelines: Color

Using The Color Theming System

All Material 3 components use a Widget.Material3 style, and these styles reference color attributes from the Material 3 theme (Theme.Material3). So, it is easy to customize those color attributes across your app by simply overriding them in your theme. We provide three accent color groups (Primary, Secondary, Tertiary), each with 4-5 color roles that you can customize to represent your brand color:

Design Color Name	Android Attribute	Light Theme Baseline (Dynamic) Color	Dark Theme Baseline (Dynamic) Color
Primary	colorPrimary	#ff6750a4 (system_accent1_600)	#ffd0bcff (system_accent1_200)
On Primary	colorOnPrimary	white (system_accent1_0)	#ff381e72 (system_accent1_800)
Primary Container	colorPrimaryContainer	#ffeaddff (system_accent1_100)	#ff4f378b (system_accent1_700)
On Primary Container	colorOnPrimaryContainer	#ff21005d (system_accent1_900)	#ffeaddff (system_accent1_100)
Inverse Primary	colorPrimaryInverse	#ffd0bcff (system_accent1_200)	#ff6750a4 (system_accent1_600)
Secondary	colorSecondary	#ff625b71 (system_accent2_600)	#ffccc2dc (system_accent2_200)
On Secondary	colorOnSecondary	white (system_accent2_0)	#ff332d41 (system_accent2_800)
Secondary Container	colorSecondaryContainer	#ffe8def8 (system_accent2_100)	#ff4a4458 (system_accent2_700)
On Secondary Container	colorOnSecondaryContainer	#ff1d192b (system_accent2_900)	#ffe8def8 (system_accent2_100)
Tertiary	colorTertiary	#ff7d5260 (system_accent3_600)	#ffefb8c8 (system_accent3_200)
On Tertiary	colorOnTertiary	white (system_accent3_0)	#ff492532 (system_accent3_800)
Tertiary Container	colorTertiaryContainer	#ffffd8e4 (system_accent3_100)	#ff633b48 (system_accent3_700)
On Tertiary Container	colorOnTertiaryContainer	#ff31111d (system_accent3_900)	#ffffd8e4 (system_accent3_100)

By changing these color attributes, you can easily change the styles of all the Material components to which your theme is applied.

The Material Design color theming system provides additional colors which don't represent your brand, but define your UI and ensures accessible color combinations. These additional color attributes are as follows:

Design Color Name	Android Attribute	Light Theme Baseline (Dynamic) Color	Dark Theme Baseline (Dynamic) Color
Error	colorError	#ffb3261e (Same)	#fff2b8b5 (Same)
On Error	colorOnError	white (Same)	#ff601410 (Same)
Error Container	colorErrorContainer	#fff9dedc (Same)	#ff8c1d18 (Same)
On Error Container	colorOnErrorContainer	#ff410e0b (Same)	#fff2b8b5 (Same)
Outline	colorOutline	#ff79747e (system_neutral2_500)	#ff938f99 (system_neutral2_400)
Background	android:colorBackground	#fffffbfe (system_neutral1_10)	#ff1c1b1f (system_neutral1_900)
On Background	colorOnBackground	#ff1c1b1f (system_neutral1_900)	#ffe6e1e5 (system_neutral1_100)
Surface	colorSurface	#fffffbfe (system_neutral1_10)	#ff1c1b1f (system_neutral1_900)
On Surface	colorOnSurface	#ff1c1b1f (system_neutral1_900)	#ffe6e1e5 (system_neutral1_100)
Surface Variant	colorSurfaceVariant	#ffe7e0ec (system_neutral2_100)	#ff49454f (system_neutral2_700)
On Surface Variant	colorOnSurfaceVariant	#ff49454f (system_neutral2_700)	#ffcac4d0 (system_neutral2_200)
Inverse Surface	colorSurfaceInverse	#ff313033 (system_neutral1_800)	#ffe6e1e5 (system_neutral1_100)
Inverse On Surface	colorOnSurfaceInverse	#fff4eff4 (system_neutral1_50)	#ff313033 (system_neutral1_800)

Using Surface Colors

Material 3 involves using primary colored elevation overlays to present visual hierarchy with different elevations in both light and dark themes. Material 3 themes enable this by default with setting ?attr/elevationOverlayColor to ?attr/colorPrimary.

In order to facilitate some orchestration around the elevation overlays, we have the following theme attributes:

Attribute Name	Description	Default Value
elevationOverlayEnabled	Whether the elevation overlay functionality is enabled.	true
elevationOverlayColor	The color used for the elevation overlays, applied at an alpha based on elevation.	colorPrimary

If inheriting from the Theme.Material3 theme or a descendant, you most likely do not have to set these attributes yourself because the Material themes already set up the above defaults.

The elevation overlays will be applied upon surface colors and create various tonal variations of surface colors. Within the Material 3 color palette, we have five predefined surface tonal variations (Surface1-5) which are used as the default surface colors (by applying different elevations) of different Material 3 components. However, these surface tonal colors are NOT implemented as color resources but their actual color values are calculated on the fly with the given ?attr/elevationOverlayColor, as mentioned above.

In a practical scenario, you have three ways to include those tonal surface colors in your app:

Material Design Components

The easiest way is using Material Design Components with built-in support of tonal surface colors/elevation overlays. You can customize surface colors of those components by changing their elevation.

The following is a list of Material components that support elevation overlays. Those components has colorSurface set as the default background color and can be elevated:

• Top App Bar
• Bottom App Bar
• Bottom Navigation
• Button
• Floating Action Button
• Chip
• Tabs
• Card
• Dialog
• Menu
• Bottom Sheet
• Navigation Drawer
• Switch
• Date Picker
• Time Picker

SurfaceColors enums

If using Material Design Components is not an option in your use case, you may want to consider getting those tonal surface colors on the fly, by using the convenient enums we provide in Material Library. For example, if you want to get the color hex value of Surface1, you can do:

int colorSurface1 = SurfaceColors.SURFACE_1.getColor(context);

This will return the calculated tonal surface color corresponding to the Surface1 definition and your ?attr/elevationOverlayColor setting in your themes.

MaterialShapeDrawable or ElevationOverlayProvider (advanced)

If you have a more complicated use case than the above ones, you can check if com.google.android.material.shape.MaterialShapeDrawable or com.google.android.material.elevation.ElevationOverlayProvider would serve your needs. These two classes provide a set of APIs to help you calculate and render blended colors according to different background colors and elevations, with the same elevation overlay formula we are using across the Material libraries. Note that we suggest you use them carefully to ensure a consistent look and feel of your app.

Using dynamic colors

Starting from Android S, the framework provides the ability to support dynamic colors in your UI based on the user's wallpaper or color choice on the device.

To apply dynamic colors, the Material 3 library provides 3 theme overlays to be used upon the base Material 3 themes:

• ThemeOverlay.Material3.DynamicColors.Light
• ThemeOverlay.Material3.DynamicColors.Dark
• ThemeOverlay.Material3.DynamicColors.DayNight (select day/night mode automatically.)

To make implementing dynamic color solutions easier, the Material 3 library provides a helper class to apply dynamic colors: com.google.android.material.color.DynamicColors. There are several ways to use this helper class according to different scenarios:

Apply dynamic colors to all activities in the app

In your application class’ onCreate() method, call:

DynamicColors.applyToActivitiesIfAvailable(this);

This will register an ActivityLifeCycleCallbacks to your application and will attempt to apply the dynamic color theme overlay specified by R.attr.dynamicColorThemeOverlay in your app/activity theme in the onActivityPreCreated() callback method, if the app is running on Android S+. By default R.attr.dynamicColorThemeOverlay will be ThemeOverlay.Material3.DynamicColors.Light/Dark if you are using Material 3 themes.

You can also have finer control over applying the theme overlay by providing a precondition when calling the method:

DynamicColors.applyToActivitiesIfAvailable(this, (activity, themeResId) -> {
  // ...implement your own logic here. Return `true` if dynamic colors should be applied.
});

Or provide your own customized dynamic color theme overlays, likely inheriting from the Material3 theme overlays above, by doing:

DynamicColors.applyToActivitiesIfAvailable(this, R.style.ThemeOverlay_MyApp_DynamicColors_DayNight);

Note that if you are applying your own non-dynamic theme overlays to override Material colors in certain activities, fragments, layouts, etc., the dynamic colors will be overwritten by your theme overlays as well because dynamic colors are applied before activities are created. If that’s not the desired behavior you want, you will need to either stop overriding Material colors in your theme overlays or customize them with a proper dynamic color definition.

Apply dynamic colors to a specific activity

You can also opt to only apply dynamic colors to a few specific activities, by calling the below method in your activities’ onCreate() method (or before you inflate anything from it):

DynamicColors.applyIfAvailable(this);

If the app is running on Android S+, dynamic colors will be applied to the activity. You can also apply with a custom theme overlay or with a precondition as depicted above in the application section.

Apply dynamic colors to a specific fragment/view

To apply dynamic colors only to a few of the views in an activity is less straightforward. If you have to do that, the easiest solution would be creating a themed context to create the view. We provide a helper method for this purpose:

context = DynamicColors.wrapContextIfAvailable(context);

This method will return a context with the dynamic color theme overlay applied, if dynamic colors are available on the device.

Note that no matter which approach you follow, you will have to have M3 base themes (e.g.,Theme.Material3.DayNight.NoActionBar) applied first to make dynamic color theme overlays work, becaue they use all of the same color theme attributes.

Custom Colors

Material 3 uses purple-ish colors as the default accent colors if dynamic colors are not available. If you need different brand colors in your app, you may want to define custom colors for your theme. Keep in mind that the default Material 3 styles generally use colors in the following combinations:

Container Color	Content Color
Surface / Surface Variant	On Surface / On Surface Variant / Primary /

: : Secondary / Error : | Primary | On Primary | | Primary Container | On Primary Container | | Secondary | On Secondary | | Secondary Container | On Secondary Container | | Tertiary | On Tertiary | | Tertiary Container | On Tertiary Container |

So if changing one of the above colors, you may want to change their relevant colors as well to maintain the visual consistency and the contrast requirement of Material components.

These color theme attributes can be customized in your theme that inherits from one of the "baseline" Theme.Material3.* themes, and dynamic color theme overlays (ThemeOverlay.Material3.DynamicColors.*), can be applied on top of your customized "baseline" theme.

[Important] Be careful to maintain the same luminance level when creating custom colors so the contrast requirement won't be broken. For example, since the default Primary color in light theme has a luminance level of 40, it would be best to use a luminance level of 40 with your custom Primary color as well, in order to avoid accidentally breaking the contrast requirement in certain components.

Defining custom colors

When creating your app colors, do not use the same name as the color slot:

<resources>
  <color name="color_primary">...</color>
  <color name="color_surface">...</color>
</resources>

Instead use literal names relevant to the RGB value. Eg:

<resources>
  <color name="brand_blue">...</color>
  <color name="brand_grey">...</color>
</resources>

Theming an Individual Component

If you want to change the color of just one instance of a component without tweaking theme-level attributes, this can be done by creating a new component style that extends from a Widget.Material3 style.

For example, if you want to change MaterialButton so that it uses colorSecondary for its background tint rather than the default color, all you need to do is define your own button style that extends from a Material Design style and set the mapping yourself:

<style name="Widget.MyApp.Button" parent="Widget.Material3.Button">
  <item name="backgroundTint">?attr/colorSecondary</item>
</style>

You would then apply the Widget.MyApp.Button style to any buttons you want to have this alternate style.

Theming All Instances of One Component

If, however, you want to change the default styles for all instances of a component, e.g. MaterialButton, this is possible by modifying the materialButtonStyle attribute in your theme.

<style name="Theme.MyApp" parent="Theme.Material3.Light.NoActionBar">
  ...
  <item name="materialButtonStyle">@style/Widget.MyApp.Button</item>
  ...
</style>

This will set the default style of any MaterialButtons in your app to Widget.MyApp.Button. Similar default style attributes exist for most other components, e.g. tabStyle, chipStyle, textInputStyle, and so on.

Theme Attribute Mapping

All MDC-Android components have been updated to use the theme attributes described above, when applicable.

To understand how the high-level theme attributes map to specific parts of each component, please refer directly to the component's documentation.