Colour
Colour in W4 is information, never decoration. If you learn the five meanings below you can read any screen without reading its text.
What each colour means
| Colour | Means | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Gold (accent) | You, value, the main action | your own card, Start, page titles, selection |
| Green (positive) | Ready, ally, free, success | ready ticks, open seats, ally names |
| Red (negative) | Enemy, full, error, danger | enemy names, full rooms, delete, errors |
| Blue (info) | Your team, the selected row, neutral highlight | team bands, selection |
| Grey (local) | Local, inactive, unavailable | a local account, disabled controls |
Text is cream for primary content, muted for captions and hints, and gold for accents. There is no fourth grey.
A player's own colour (one of the twelve Warcraft III colours) appears only where it means ownership: a small swatch on a card, a name, a minimap dot. It is never used for the interface itself.
Surfaces
The world is cold, the accent is warm. Panels are dark navy glass; deeper layers are darker and bluer, raised layers are lighter with a lit top edge. The distance between a panel and what is behind it is always visible, never a near match.
Borders are quiet steel by default and gold when something is yours or selected. A border is a lighter step of its own fill, not an unrelated grey.
No panel is pure black and no text is pure white. Black is very dark navy, white is cream.
60-30-10
About sixty per cent of any screen is calm navy, thirty per cent is panels, text and quiet edges, and ten per cent is gold and the meaning colours. When everything is gold, gold means nothing, so each screen has one hero colour moment.
Contrast
Legibility is measured, not guessed. Body text must reach 4.5:1 against its actual background; large text, icons and borders that carry meaning must reach 3:1. Text over the game world gets a dark plate or outline so bright snow or fire cannot swallow it.
Contrast also means feel: warm against cool, one saturated colour in a calm field, a small accent on a large neutral. The signature is gold on midnight.
States
States change value and saturation, not hue: hover is lighter, pressed is darker, disabled is greyed and lower in contrast but still readable, focus is a gold ring, selected is a filled tone with a ring and a mark that is not colour.
For map makers
Your map's text and player colours sit on the same surfaces. Pick player colours freely, but do not rely on a colour to carry a message: say it in words too. Team and ownership colours never recolour the interface.