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Colors and Styles

Tabulate provides extensive color and styling options to make your tables visually appealing. You can apply colors to fonts, backgrounds, borders, and corners.

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Available Colors

Thanks to termcolor, Tabulate supports 8 colors:
  • Color::grey
  • Color::red
  • Color::green
  • Color::yellow
  • Color::blue
  • Color::magenta
  • Color::cyan
  • Color::white
The appearance of these colors varies depending on your terminal and color scheme.

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Font Colors

You can set both foreground (text) and background colors for font: 
// Set font color (foreground)
cell.format().font_color(Color::red);

// Set font background color
cell.format().font_background_color(Color::yellow);

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Complete Color Example

Here’s a comprehensive example demonstrating various color applications: 
#include <tabulate/table.hpp>
using namespace tabulate;

int main() {
  Table colors;

  colors.add_row({"Font Color is Red", "Font Color is Blue", "Font Color is Green"});
  colors.add_row({"Everything is Red", "Everything is Blue", "Everything is Green"});
  colors.add_row({"Font Background is Red", "Font Background is Blue", "Font Background is Green"});

  // First row: Font colors only
  colors[0][0].format()
    .font_color(Color::red)
    .font_style({FontStyle::bold});
  colors[0][1].format()
    .font_color(Color::blue)
    .font_style({FontStyle::bold});
  colors[0][2].format()
    .font_color(Color::green)
    .font_style({FontStyle::bold});

  // Second row: Everything colored (font, background, borders)
  colors[1][0].format()
    .border_left_color(Color::red)
    .border_left_background_color(Color::red)
    .font_background_color(Color::red)
    .font_color(Color::red);

  colors[1][1].format()
    .border_left_color(Color::blue)
    .border_left_background_color(Color::blue)
    .font_background_color(Color::blue)
    .font_color(Color::blue);

  colors[1][2].format()
    .border_left_color(Color::green)
    .border_left_background_color(Color::green)
    .font_background_color(Color::green)
    .font_color(Color::green)
    .border_right_color(Color::green)
    .border_right_background_color(Color::green);

  // Third row: Background colors only
  colors[2][0].format()
    .font_background_color(Color::red)
    .font_style({FontStyle::bold});
  colors[2][1].format()
    .font_background_color(Color::blue)
    .font_style({FontStyle::bold});
  colors[2][2].format()
    .font_background_color(Color::green)
    .font_style({FontStyle::bold});

  std::cout << colors << std::endl;
}

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Font Styles

Tabulate supports 8 font styles: 
cell.format().font_style({FontStyle::bold});

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Available Styles

  • FontStyle::bold - Bold text
  • FontStyle::dark - Darker/dimmed text
  • FontStyle::italic - Italic text
  • FontStyle::underline - Underlined text
  • FontStyle::blink - Blinking text
  • FontStyle::reverse - Reversed foreground/background
  • FontStyle::concealed - Hidden text
  • FontStyle::crossed - Strikethrough text
Depending on your terminal and terminal settings, some font styles might not render correctly or at all.

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Combining Styles

The font_style method takes a vector, allowing you to apply multiple styles simultaneously: 
// Bold and italic
cell.format().font_style({FontStyle::bold, FontStyle::italic});

// Bold, italic, and underlined
cell.format().font_style({FontStyle::bold, FontStyle::italic, FontStyle::underline});

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Border and Corner Colors

You can color individual borders and corners:
1

Set border colors

table.format()
  .border_left_color(Color::yellow)
  .border_right_color(Color::green)
  .border_top_color(Color::cyan)
  .border_bottom_color(Color::red);
2

Set corner colors

table.format()
  .corner_top_left_color(Color::cyan)
  .corner_top_right_color(Color::yellow)
  .corner_bottom_left_color(Color::green)
  .corner_bottom_right_color(Color::red);

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Common Styling Patterns

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Styled Headers

A common pattern is to style header rows with bold, colored text: 
// Style header row
for (size_t i = 0; i < column_count; ++i) {
  table[0][i].format()
    .font_color(Color::yellow)
    .font_align(FontAlign::center)
    .font_style({FontStyle::bold});
}

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Alternating Row Colors

Create zebra-striped tables for better readability: 
for (size_t i = 1; i < table.size(); ++i) {
  if (i % 2 == 0) {
    for (auto& cell : table[i]) {
      cell.format().font_background_color(Color::blue);
    }
  }
}
Font styles are applied to the entire cell. Unlike HTML, you cannot apply styles to specific words within a cell.

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Color Application Hierarchy

Colors follow the style inheritance model:
  1. Cell formatting (highest priority)
  2. Row formatting
  3. Column formatting
  4. Table formatting (lowest priority)
This allows you to override table-wide colors for specific cells, rows, or columns.

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