SizingKitElectronics · reference chart
Resistor color code calculator
Pick the bands you can see and this returns the resistance, the tolerance window it may actually lie in, and the temperature coefficient where a sixth band carries one. Type a resistance instead and it prints the band sequence to hunt for. The full IEC 60062 chart sits at the foot of the page and is laid out to print on its own — free, no account, and drawn as markup rather than as a picture of a chart, so it stays sharp on paper.
- 100% free
- No signup
- 3, 4, 5 and 6 bands
- 12-color chart
- Prints on one sheet
Read the bands off the part
Hold the resistor with the wider, further-spaced band on the right and work left to right. Gold and silver are almost never the first band, which is the fastest way to tell which end you are starting from.
NOMINAL
4.7 kΩ
THE BAND IT MAY LIE IN
4.465 kΩ – 4.935 kΩ
| Tolerance | ±5% |
|---|---|
| Temperature coefficient | not encoded on this part |
| Preferred series | E12, and so also E24 |
| Nearest standard value | this value is one |
| Read from the other end | the far end cannot be a first digit — this part only reads one way |
| Drift over a 50 °C rise | — |
IEC 60062, resistor color code — digit, multiplier and tolerance bands. The multiplier column is computed as 10 raised to each color's digit rather than copied, so it cannot disagree with the digit column. Preferred-series membership is checked against IEC 60063, preferred number series for resistors and capacitors.
Or go the other way — a value into bands
Useful when you are hunting through a drawer for a part rather than identifying one you already have in your hand.
Any value; the bands round it to what the code can hold.
Six-band parts add a coefficient the value cannot imply.
Sets the last band.
Yellow · Violet · Red · Gold
A stock value: E12, and so also E24.
The chart, for the drawer front
Twelve colors, four columns. Print this page and everything but this table drops away.
| Color | Digit | Multiplier | Tolerance | ppm/K |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Black | 0 | ×1 | — | — |
| Brown | 1 | ×10 | ±1% | 100 |
| Red | 2 | ×100 | ±2% | 50 |
| Orange | 3 | ×1 k | — | 15 |
| Yellow | 4 | ×10 k | — | 25 |
| Green | 5 | ×100 k | ±0.5% | — |
| Blue | 6 | ×1 M | ±0.25% | 10 |
| Violet | 7 | ×10 M | ±0.1% | 5 |
| Gray | 8 | ×100 M | ±0.05% | — |
| White | 9 | ×1 G | — | — |
| Gold | — | ×0.1 | ±5% | — |
| Silver | — | ×0.01 | ±10% | — |
| No band | — | — | ±20% | — |
The ppm/K column is short three entries on purpose. Charts in circulation give black, green and gray coefficients that contradict one another, and a coefficient is exactly the figure somebody looks up after a circuit drifted, so those three are left blank rather than guessed — take them from the manufacturer’s datasheet for that part number. 6 colors carry a figure that every source agrees on.
How to read a resistor whose bands are faded, reversed or on a body too small to hold them
The code is trivial once you know which end is band one. Almost every misread resistor is a resistor read backwards.
Find the end to start from
The tolerance band is set slightly further from its neighbors than the others, and on most parts it is wider. Failing that: gold and silver are never a first digit, so if either is at one end, that end is the finish. Put the isolated band on your right and read leftwards.
Count the bands before you name any of them
Three, four, five or six changes the meaning of every band that follows. Four bands means two digits, five and six mean three, and a six-band part hangs a temperature coefficient off the end. Get the count wrong and a 4.7 kΩ reads as 47 Ω.
Check the answer against the preferred series
The tool says which of E12, E24 and E96 a decoded value belongs to. Almost every real part is in one of them, so a value in none of them is a warning: the page also decodes the part from the other end and tells you when only that direction lands on a stock value.
Technical specifications
| Band counts handled | 3 (2 digits, ±20% implied), 4 (2 digits + tolerance), 5 (3 digits + tolerance), 6 (adds a coefficient band) |
|---|---|
| Colors in the chart | 12 — ten digit colors plus gold and silver, which carry a fractional multiplier and a wide tolerance but no digit |
| Value span the code can express | 0.01 Ω on a silver multiplier to 99 GΩ on a white multiplier with three digits; outside that there is no band to print and the tool says so |
| Tolerance bands | Brown ±1%, red ±2%, green ±0.5%, blue ±0.25%, violet ±0.1%, gray ±0.05%, gold ±5%, silver ±10%, no band ±20% |
| Coefficient bands carried | 6 of 9 — brown 100, red 50, orange 15, yellow 25, blue 10, violet 5 ppm/K. Black, green and gray are left blank because circulating charts disagree on them |
| Multiplier column | Generated as 10 raised to each color's own digit rather than transcribed, so the two columns cannot drift apart |
| Preferred-series check | Against IEC 60063: E12 (12 values per decade), E24 (24) and E96 (96), with E96 generated from 10^(n/96) and E24 stored as a table because eight of its values sit off that rounding |
| Privacy | The chart and both decoders are static data and arithmetic in the page; no band you select is sent anywhere |
Frequently asked questions
Which end of the resistor is the first band?
The end furthest from the tolerance band, which is the one printed with a visibly wider gap before it and is often physically wider. Two shortcuts settle most parts without measuring anything: gold and silver cannot be a first digit, so a gold band marks the finishing end, and a value read the wrong way round almost never lands on a preferred series. This page decodes both directions and flags the case where only the reverse reading is a stock value.
My resistor has five bands. Is the fifth one tolerance or a multiplier?
Tolerance. A five-band part spends three bands on digits, one on the multiplier and the last on tolerance — that extra digit is the whole reason the format exists, because a 1% part needs three significant figures to name a value in E96. If the fifth band is gold or silver you almost certainly have a six-band part with a faded coefficient band, or a four-band part where a body stripe is being counted.
What does the sixth band mean?
It is the temperature coefficient in parts per million per kelvin: a 50 ppm/K part changes by 0.005% for each degree, so a 10 kΩ resistor moves 25 Ω over a 50 °C rise. It matters in a reference divider or a precision current sense and almost nowhere else. Six-band parts also occasionally carry a reliability band instead, which is a military marking and is not the same code.
Why does the coefficient column have blanks in it?
Because black, green and gray appear in circulating charts with figures that contradict each other, and this site refuses a number it cannot source rather than picking one. Six colors — brown, red, orange, yellow, blue and violet — are consistent everywhere they are published and are the six the picker offers. For the other three, the manufacturer's datasheet for that part number is the only authority.
The value I decoded is not a value anyone sells. What went wrong?
Usually the band count or the direction. Real parts are drawn from E12, E24 or E96, so 5.9 kΩ decoding out of a four-band part is a misread — most likely green and white confused under warm light, or blue read as violet. The page checks membership on every decode and prints which series a value belongs to, so a blank there is the signal to look again.
A brown band and a red band look identical on my part. How do I tell?
Measure it. Both are dark on a small body and both are common as a first digit, which makes the difference between 1 kΩ and 2 kΩ. A meter across the part settles it in a second and is the correct move: this chart tells you what a part is marked as, and marking is not measurement. That is also why the tool prints the tolerance window rather than a single number.
Are the colors on screen the colors on the part?
Close enough to compare, not close enough to trust. Body coating shifts the apparent hue — the same brown band reads redder on a beige carbon film body than on a blue metal film one — and the swatches here are ink chosen for screen contrast rather than sampled from any manufacturer's paint. Use them to remember the order, and the part in your hand as the reference.
About IEC 60062, the preferred series, and why the multiplier is not a table
The color code exists because a resistor is a cylinder two millimeters across that has to be readable from any rotation, in a drawer, upside down. Printed digits fail all three tests and bands do not, which is why a scheme designed in the 1920s survived the arrival of surface-mount parts that print digits instead. IEC 60062 fixes the assignment: ten colors carry the digits nought through nine in spectral order after black and brown, and the multiplier band is not an independent lookup at all — it is ten raised to that same color’s digit. Red is the digit 2 and the multiplier 100 for the same reason. Gold and silver extend the multiplier below unity, to a tenth and a hundredth, and do double duty as the two loose tolerance bands.
What the code cannot express is any value that is not two or three significant figures times a power of ten, and that constraint is why the preferred series exist alongside it. IEC 60063 divides each decade into 12, 24, 48, 96 or 192 steps chosen so that consecutive values overlap at the part’s tolerance: twelve values suffice at ±10%, twenty-four at ±5%, ninety-six at ±1%. Every series from E48 upward is exactly 10^(n/N) rounded, so those can be generated. E24 cannot — eight of its twenty-four values were shifted onto numbers the trade already stocked, which is why 27 and 30 exist where the geometric series says 26 and 29. Knowing that a real part is nearly always a series member turns the code into a self-checking one, and it is the check this page runs on every decode.
Two habits are worth carrying away from the chart. The tolerance is not decoration: a ±5% 4.7 kΩ part is a license to be anywhere between 4.465 kΩ and 4.935 kΩ, and a divider built from two of them inherits a band, not a number — the voltage divider calculator works that band out at both extremes. And the value on the body is the value at room temperature and no load; power raises the body temperature, the coefficient moves the resistance, and in an RC timing network that drift lands directly on the time constant. If you are picking the part rather than reading it, the LED resistor calculator sizes the series resistor and its wattage, and the Ohm’s law calculator turns a measured voltage and current back into the resistance you should have seen.
Where the chart lives
Every number on this page is worked out by JavaScript running in the tab you are reading it in. Nothing you type — loads, lengths, nameplate ratings, the rates your utility charges you — is uploaded, logged or kept, which is also why the calculators carry on working in a mechanical room with no signal.
The color table is compiled into the page rather than fetched, so the chart and both decoders work with the network off — which is the state of most benches in a basement.