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I often run commands in cmd.exe that have pretty colors in their output, which is great. Unfortunately, sometimes they die in the middle, or I have to kill them, and then the console window itself gets stuck in (say) red text on black background, which is awkward.

How do I reset the text color to the default?

On a unix terminal, I can type reset -- I'm looking for the cmd.exe equivalent of that.

Ken
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3 Answers3

105

Color 07 will set it to the default scheme that cmd.exe uses.

Color attributes are specified by TWO hex digits -- the first corresponds to the background; the second the foreground. Each digit can be any of the following values:

0 = Black       8 = Gray
1 = Blue        9 = Light Blue
2 = Green       A = Light Green
3 = Aqua        B = Light Aqua
4 = Red         C = Light Red
5 = Purple      D = Light Purple
6 = Yellow      E = Light Yellow
7 = White       F = Bright White
Hondalex
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  • All 3 answers so far are very helpful, but color 07 (and not just color) worked here, so I'll mark this one. – Ken Jun 30 '10 at 22:32
  • color has on my environment the same effect as color 75 (purple on light gray), a combination that I set as the default in console's settings (and that I would like to remove now). color 07 turns my console into a scary white on red. – xverges Jan 06 '14 at 14:36
  • Disappointing that color 00 doesn't work... – tim_hutton Dec 18 '15 at 13:38
  • Can't believe I've been quitting the console for years every time one of my tools went awry, when I could have just done this... :( – Robbie Dee Sep 23 '22 at 08:53
38

Try Color

Use color /? to see all the commands

COLOR If no argument is given, this command restores the color to what it was when CMD.EXE started. This value either comes from the current console window, the /T command line switch or from the DefaultColor registry value.

Brad
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Moab
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13

Well according to: http://commandwindows.com/vista-commands.htm

You just type COLOR.

Worked for me just now...

peelman
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