Resistor Color Code

The standard coding scheme for resistors was first used in a form with four rings. The mantissa is given with two digits, one ring stands for the exponent and the last ring corresponds to the tolerance of the resistance of the component. This form is used mainly for low quality carbon film resistors with large tolerance values in the order of 5% to 20%.

	mantissa				exponent			tolerance
	0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9	0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9			x 1 x 10 x 100 x 1k x 10k x 100k x 1M x 10M x 0.01 x 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.01			±20% ±1% ±2% ±3% 0...+100% ±0.5% ±0.25% ±0.1% ±5% ±10%
	black brown red orange yellow green blue violet gray white	black brown red orange yellow green blue violet gray white			black brown red orange yellow green blue violet gray white gold silver			black brown red orange yellow green blue violet gold silver
(above table requires JavaScript)

color		mantissa		exponent	tolerance
	black	0	0	x 1	±20%
	brown	1	1	x 10	±1%
	red	2	2	x 100	±2%
	orange	3	3	x 1k	±3%
	yellow	4	4	x 10k	0...+100%
	green	5	5	x 100k	±0.5%
	blue	6	6	x 1M	±0.25%
	violet	7	7	x 10M	±0.1%
	gray	8	8	x 0.01	-
	white	9	9	x 0.1	-
	gold	-	-	x 0.1	±5%
	silver	-	-	x 0.01	±10%

Responsible for these pages: U. Zimmermann