Change Console Foreground And Background Color In C#

In one of my recent applications, I needed to change the foreground and the background colors of the system console.

The Console class in C# represents the system console. We can achieve this by setting Console’s foreground and background properties. The ConsoleColor enum represents a value of the console color. Keep in mind, the ConsoleColor supports a limited number of colors only.

The following code snippet returns the current background and the foreground colors of the console.

ConsoleColor background = Console.BackgroundColor;
ConsoleColor foreground = Console.ForegroundColor;

The following code snippet sets the foreground and the background colors of the console.

Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.White;
Console.BackgroundColor = ConsoleColor.Red;

After ForegroundColor and BackgroundColor values are set, call Console.Clear() to apply it to the entire background and foreground.

Console.Clear();

The ResetColor method resets the console’s default foreground and background colors.

Console.ResetColor();

Listing 1 is the complete code that loops through all Console colors and changes console’s background and foreground colors.

using System;
class ConsoleColorsClass {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
        // Let's go through all Console colors and set them as foreground
        foreach(ConsoleColor color in Enum.GetValues(typeof(ConsoleColor))) {
            Console.ForegroundColor = color;
            Console.Clear();
            Console.WriteLine($ "Foreground color set to {color}");
        }
        Console.WriteLine("=====================================");
        Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.White;
        // Let's go through all Console colors and set them as background
        foreach(ConsoleColor color in Enum.GetValues(typeof(ConsoleColor))) {
            Console.BackgroundColor = color;
            Console.WriteLine($ "Background color set to {color}");
        }
        Console.WriteLine("=====================================");
        // Restore original colors
        Console.ResetColor();
        Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

Listing 1.

The output of Listing 1 generates Figure 1.

 
Figure 1