Standard bg colors (SGR 40-47)

Category: sgr · Tags: ECMA-48 Standard · Specification ↗

ESC [ 40–47 m

SGR 40-47 set the background color to one of 8 standard colors: black (40), red (41), green (42), yellow (43), blue (44), magenta (45), cyan (46), white (47). Universally supported. As with foreground colors, the actual RGB values depend on the terminal's configured color scheme.

How this is tested: Send \x1b[42mX (green bg), verify the cell's background color has a green channel > 100.

Analysis2026-03-26

Supported by all 8 tested terminals — universal adoption. Part of the Core TUI baseline.

Supported by 12 of 13 backends (92%)

Terminal Applications

Terminal	Version	Support	Notes
iTerm2	3.6.9	✓ yes
Ghostty	1.3.1	✓ yes
VS Code	1.112.0	✓ yes
Warp	0.2026.03.18.08.24.03	✓ yes
Cursor	2.6.21	✓ yes
tmux	3.6a	✓ yes
Kitty	0.46.2	✓ yes
Terminal.app	2.15	✓ yes
GNU Screen	5.0.1	✓ yes

Headless Backends

Parser correctness only — a ✓ means the parser accepts the sequence.

Backend	Version	Support	Notes
Alacritty	0.26.0	✓ yes
vt100	0.2.1	✓ yes
vterm	0.2.0	✓ yes
WezTerm	0.1.0-fork.5	~ partial	Backend returns palette index instead of resolved RGB

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