Can You Emphasize Text with Color as Well as Bold? How to Use Highlight Colors in Web Copy
If you need readers to notice an important phrase in a web article, should you change its color as well as making it bold? You can, when the extra distinction serves a purpose. But color is not automatically more effective than bold text, and a colored phrase can even be mistaken for a link. Using a fictional library reading-volunteer sign-up page, this article compares emphasizing exactly the same sentence with bold text alone and with bold text plus a restrained text color.
Use Bold Text as the Starting Point, Adding Color Only Where It Helps
Imagine a notice that says, “Reading-volunteer applications close on November 6 at 5:00 p.m. Walk-in registration is not available.” First, make “Applications close on November 6 at 5:00 p.m.” bold. Even when the rest of the sentence uses the same color, the change in weight gives readers a way to find the deadline. Writing the deadline and the no-walk-in condition clearly is more important than assigning them striking colors.
If the sign-up guide is long and one deadline needs to be especially easy to locate, a dark accent color can reinforce the bold phrase. On the other hand, applying bold and different colors to nearly every sentence removes the intended hierarchy. Select one or two genuinely important phrases rather than coloring a whole paragraph simply because its subject matters.
HTML, the markup language that identifies the role of content on a web page, offers the <strong> element for text with strong importance. For purely visual bold styling, CSS—the styling language that controls text appearance—provides the font-weight property. It helps to distinguish content that is genuinely important from text made bold for appearance alone.
Compare Bold Only and Bold with Color in the Same Sign-Up Message
The colors below use HEX codes, a format with a hash sign followed by six hexadecimal characters from 0–9 and A–F. A contrast ratio describes the relative luminance difference between text and its background. Both versions keep the page background white #FFFFFF and ordinary paragraph text deep blue-gray #263746. This pairing has approximately 12.23:1 contrast.
Option A: Keep the Bold Deadline the Same Color as the Paragraph
Take the sentence, “Reading-volunteer applications close on November 6 at 5:00 p.m. Walk-in registration is not available.” Set the bold phrase in the same deep blue-gray #263746 as the other words. Against white #FFFFFF, its contrast ratio remains approximately 12.23:1. This arrangement makes the deadline easier to locate through weight without introducing another text color.
If readers can already find the closing time easily, there is no need to add an accent. “Walk-in registration is not available” is also a meaningful condition, so keep it in the sentence and place it on its own short line if that helps. Improving the wording and grouping is usually a better first move than inventing a different color for every condition.
Option B: Add Deep Plum to the Bold Deadline Only
On a longer sign-up page, you could set applications close on November 6 at 5:00 p.m. in deep plum #713B55 while keeping it bold. Against white #FFFFFF, that text has approximately 8.54:1 contrast. Leave the surrounding paragraph in deep blue-gray #263746 so that only the phrase requiring special attention changes color.
If the sign-up conditions appear in a pale lavender #F5EFF2 notice area, deep blue-gray body text #263746 has approximately 10.78:1 contrast, and deep plum emphasis text #713B55 has approximately 7.53:1. Check the contrast again whenever the background changes. Very pale dusty pink #B68C9F would provide only about 2.90:1 against white #FFFFFF and 2.56:1 against pale lavender #F5EFF2. Neither pairing is suitable for normal-sized meaningful text.
Distinguish Emphasis from Links and Check Actual Text Contrast
A colored bold phrase may appear clickable if it looks too much like an ordinary site link. For an actual “Read the application guidelines” link, you might instead use deep blue #165C85 with an underline. This link color has approximately 7.23:1 contrast against white #FFFFFF and 6.38:1 against the pale lavender area #F5EFF2. Keep link styling and keyboard-focus indicators recognizable so that readers do not have to infer clickability from color alone.
On phones, check that a colored deadline still makes sense when the phrase wraps across lines and that it does not become smaller than nearby text. It is also useful to view the page without color: bold weight and explicit wording should still communicate the closing time and registration rule.
Under Level AA of WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), normal-sized text generally needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background, and large text needs at least 3:1. Do not assume that 16px bold text qualifies as large text and only needs 3:1. Information also should not be conveyed by color alone. The ratios here were calculated for solid, opaque colors; text placed over photographs or transparency needs a separate check against its actual background. The goal is not to use more accent colors, but to help readers find an important phrase and understand it correctly.