Understanding Resistor Color Codes

Understanding Resistor Color Codes is easy with alittle bit of memorization. Here is a chart that makes it real easy to do.

1st and 2nd color bands

these make up the first 2 digits of the resistors Ohms.

• Black = 0
• Brown = 1
• Red = 2
• Orange = 3
• Yellow = 4
• Green = 5
• Blue = 6
• Violet = 7
• Gray = 8
• White = 9

3rd color band

Take the 2 numbers from the 1st and 2nd bands, and multiply them by the amount specified by the 3rd color number value. (With exception to silver and gold)

• Black = X1
• Brown = X10
• Red = X100
• orange = X1k (1,000)
• Yellow = X10K (10,000)
• Green = X100K (100,000)
• Blue = X1meg (1,000,000)
• Silver = Divide first 2 by 100
• Gold = Divide first 2 by 10

Tolerance

4th color band is the tolerance (%)

• Gold = 5%
• Silver = 10%
• NONE = 20%

example

• 1st-red=2, 2nd-red=2 3rd-brown=X10, 4th-gold=5%
• 22 X 10 = 220
• 220 Ohm resistor @ 5%