Alternating Row Colors design pattern

The user needs to visually separate similar looking rows in a table apart in order to match the values of each row.

Use when you have several columns in a table
Use when the content of each column is often of similar nature
Use when there a multiple lines for each row
Use when the height of each row varies

To differentiate table rows from each other, a different shade is used as background color for every second row. Keep the difference between the two colors to a minimum to preserve a gentle feeling. The colors should be similar in value and low in saturation – the one should be slightly darker or lighter than the other. It is often seen that one of the two colors is the background color of the page itself.

The purpose of the shading in every second row is only to provide an aid for the every to follow a row from the left to the right and back again – without confusing one row with another. The purpose is not to drastically change the design of the table.

A side effect of shading every second row with an alternating color is however that the table will stand out from the rest of the page. The shading in this way boxes in the table.

From download.com
From mysql.com
Alternating column colors are used in the shopping cart at Williams-Sonoma to distinguish columns from each other.

View more example screenshots

6 Comments

Peter

7 Jul, 2008

A List Apart has a very interesting article on Alternating Row Colors or Zebra Striping – http://www.alistapart.com/articles/zebrastripingdoesithelp – worth a read before you decide to alternate row colors!

Mona

9 Apr, 2009

Zebra stripping doesn’t work in interactive apps where there are mouse overs, selects, inline edits etc. I think it was great in the paper world but is outdated and even damaging in web apps of today.

Josh Johnson

27 Aug, 2009

I disagree that it fails to work in interactive apps. I’ve created quite a few examples of subtly shaded alternating row colors with highly contrasted hover and selection colors, so even from an accessibility standpoint it remains functional. That said, the designer needs to make a choice about whether it makes sense or is causing visual distraction. I rarely find that alternating colors and visually delineated boxes around the cells are both required (as shown in the example), but when you’re striving for high data density, trading an extra pixel per row for the border in exchange for alternating background colors can be the right choice.

Michael

13 Jul, 2010

I don’t like doing this with every alternating row. Instead I prefer rows in groups of three. This is especially useful when you have long horizontal rows as it enables the eye to keep track of where you are at easier. With every other row alternating in color, it is too easy for the eye to wander up or down.

Something else to keep the eye from wandering, is to use the mouse. You can use the “hover” pseudo class. In MSIE (at least to 8) this only works on the anchor (“a”) tag, but in other browsers it works on everything (I think). This enables the user to use the mouse to select which row they are reading, and then just leave the mouse over it. (You could probably use “mouseover” to do this in JavaScript so it works in MSIE.)

And, postscript. What about having hover on column headings so that you can change the background color on columns as well? Probably needs JavaScript …

drivermac

11 Jan, 2012

Yes, I think it was great in the paper world but is outdated and even damaging in web apps of today

Bruce

20 Sep, 2012

There is a typo in the Rational Section, it is showing:
Rationale
The purpose of the shading in every second row is only to provide an aid for the every to follow a row from the left to the right and back again – without confusing one row with another. The purpose is not to drastically change the design of the table.

It should be:
The purpose of the shading in every second row is only to provide an aid for the eye…