How To Web Design & Dev Overriding the Default Link Colors on a Web Browser Using CSS Share Pin Email Print David Malan/Photographer's Choice RF/Getty Images Web Design & Dev Basics HTML CSS by Jennifer Kyrnin Jennifer Kyrnin is a professional web developer who assists others in learning web design, HTML, CSS, and XML. Updated August 11, 2019 All web browsers use default colors for links if the web designer doesn't set them. They are: The default link colorThe active link color (when the mouse is clicked and held over the link)The followed link color (when the link was clicked previously) Plus, while most browsers don't change this by default, you can also define the hover color — the color the link is when a mouse is held over it. Use CSS to Change Link Colors To change these colors, use a Cascading Style Sheet. The easiest way to change the link color is to style the tag: a { color: black; } With this CSS, some browsers will change all aspects of the link (active, followed, and hover) to black, while others will only change the default color. Use CSS Pseudo-classes to Change All Parts of a Link A pseudo-class is represented in CSS with a colon (:) before the class name. Four pseudo-classes affect links: To change the default link color: a:link { color: red; } To change the active color: a:active { color: blue; } To change the followed link color: a:visited { color: purple; } To change the mouse over color: a:hover { color: green; } Considerations Avoid overwriting default link colors to make links more difficult to find. For example, changing a link to a very light color against a white background will adversely affect visually impaired visitors. Aim for separate colors for active and followed-link colors, too, to ensure that site visitors don't get confused about which pages they've visited. Continue Reading