Change PDF Page Color
Change the background color of PDF pages without affecting text or layout.
Powerful color customization
Full control over your PDF background color, with the accuracy controls underneath it.
Full Color Picker
Any color, in HEX, RGB or HSL — plus your browser’s eye dropper and an opacity slider.
Page Range
The whole document, just the page you’re on, or ranges like 1-3,6,8-12.
Presets
Sepia, cream, night mode, legal-pad yellow, brand colors and accessibility presets.
Blend Modes
Replace, Multiply, Darken, Lighten and Overlay — real ISO 32000 blend modes.
Live Preview
Every change re-composites the page instantly. Nothing is uploaded and nothing re-renders.
See the difference
Drag the handle. The same page, the same text, the same table — only the paper changes.
Project Proposal
Web Development Project
This proposal sets out the scope, delivery timeline and costs for the redesign and rebuild of the public-facing website, including the content migration.
- Objective 1: Rebuild the site on a maintainable stack
- Objective 2: Cut page load time to under one second
- Objective 3: Meet WCAG 2.2 AA across every template
| Task | Start Date | End Date | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design | May 1, 2026 | May 15, 2026 | Completed |
| Development | May 16, 2026 | Jun 15, 2026 | In Progress |
| Testing | Jun 16, 2026 | Jun 30, 2026 | Pending |
A working demo of the real controls, shown in Replace background mode. In the editor these run against your own file — and Night Mode shows the honest catch: recoloring the page does not recolor the text.
Change the background color of a PDF — without touching anything else
To change a PDF page’s background color, open the file above, choose a color, pick which pages it applies to, and press Apply Color. The color is written into the page as a single filled rectangle placed beneath the existing content, so the text, fonts, images and layout are left exactly as they were. Nothing is converted to an image.
- Keeps Text
& Images Safe - Nothing Is
Rasterized - Preview Before
Download - 100% Private
Never Uploaded
Most “PDF color” tools screenshot every page and hand you back a stack of pictures: the text stops being selectable, the file triples in size, and the fonts are gone. This one adds one drawing instruction per page and changes nothing else in the document.
How to change the background color of a PDF page
Open your PDF
Drag and drop the file or choose it from your device. It is read in your browser and never uploaded.
Pick a color and pages
Choose a preset or enter a HEX, RGB or HSL value, then target the whole document, the current page, or a custom range such as
1-3,6,8-12.Choose how it is applied
Replace the background to place the color beneath the content, or use Multiply, Darken, Lighten or Overlay to tint what is already there.
Preview and download
Drag the before/after slider to compare the real output, then apply the color and download the recolored PDF.
What actually happens to your file
A PDF page is a list of drawing instructions. We never edit one. We add exactly one instruction — fill the page box with your color — and place it either beforethe page’s own content, so it sits underneath every glyph and image, or after it with an ISO 32000 blend mode in an /ExtGState dictionary. Everything else in the object graph is copied through byte for byte.
- Text stays real text — selectable, searchable, copy-pasteable.
- Vector art stays vector; nothing is flattened to pixels.
- Embedded fonts, font metrics and glyph positions are untouched.
- Annotations, form fields, links, outlines and page labels survive.
- Images keep their original compression. Nothing is re-encoded.
- Page dimensions, rotation, crop boxes and bleed boxes are never rewritten.
Which blend mode should I use?
| Mode | Where the color is drawn | Best for | Can it alter dark text? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Replace background | Beneath the page content | Any document with a clean white background | No — never |
| Multiply | On top | Scanned pages and photos you want tinted | No — black stays black |
| Darken | On top | Tinting without ever lightening anything | No — it can only darken |
| Lighten | On top | Washing out an over-dark scan | Yes |
| Overlay | On top | Tinting while keeping photographic depth | Yes |
How do I make a PDF dark mode?
Presets cover the common cases — sepia and cream for long reading, a pale blue or green for low glare, legal-pad yellow, near-black for night reading, and pure white for maximum contrast. The accessibility presets go further and set the blend mode and protection options to match the intent, so Reader Mode tints the paper but leaves photographs alone.
One honest caveat about dark mode: recoloring the page does not recolor the text. On a normal black-on-white document a dark background will hide the text unless your reader also inverts it. The preview shows you this immediately rather than letting you find out after download.
Smart page detection
Every page you preview is inspected: whether it already paints its own background, whether it is a scan, a vector drawing, an image-only page or a mix, whether it contains a gradient or semi-transparent watermark, and where each image sits. That is what lets “Auto Detect” put the color behind a clean page but blend it into one that already has a background — and what lets the tool warn you when a choice would produce an invisible result.
Privacy
Your PDF never leaves your browser. Reading, previewing and rewriting all happen on your own machine, so there is nothing to upload, nothing stored and nothing to delete. See our privacy policy for details.
Limits
Files up to 10MB and 100 pages. Large documents are processed page by page with a progress bar you can cancel. Password-protected PDFs must be unlocked first, and digitally signed PDFs are flagged before export because rewriting a file always invalidates its signature.
Related PDF tools
- Edit PDF — change the text and images themselves, not just the page behind them.
- Remove PDF watermark — if the mark you want gone is content rather than background.
- Compress PDF — bring a file under the size limit before recoloring it.
- Annotate PDF — highlight, draw and redact on top of the page.
- How PDF content streams work — the format detail this tool is built on.
- All PDF tools — the full directory.
Frequently asked questions
Open your PDF, pick a color, choose which pages it applies to, and press Apply Color. The color is added as a background layer beneath the page content, so the text, images and layout stay exactly where they were.
No. The tool never edits an existing drawing instruction — it only adds one rectangle per page. In the default mode that rectangle is drawn before the page content, so it is physically impossible for it to alter a glyph, a font or a vector shape.
No. Pages are never converted to images. Text stays selectable and searchable, fonts stay embedded, vector art stays vector, and images keep their original compression — they are never re-encoded.
Yes. Choose the entire document, just the page you are looking at, or a custom range such as 1-3,6,8-12. Invalid or out-of-range entries are rejected with an explanation before anything is written.
Replace paints the color underneath the page, which is the safest option and works on any document with a clean background. Multiply paints on top and multiplies each pixel by your color, so white paper takes the color while black text stays black — this is the mode for tinting scanned pages.
Pick the Dark Mode accessibility preset, or choose a near-black color with Replace background. Note that a dark page only helps if the document text is light; on a normal black-on-white document you also need a reader that inverts the text.
Yes. Annotations, form fields, links, outlines, page labels, rotation, crop and bleed boxes, embedded fonts and document metadata are all carried through untouched. Only the page content stream gains one extra object.
Adding a color layer rewrites the file, which invalidates any existing digital signature. The tool detects signed documents and warns you before you download, so it is never a surprise.
No. This tool runs entirely in your browser using WebAssembly and JavaScript. Your PDF is read, previewed and rewritten on your own machine and never leaves it.
Yes, but choose the right mode. A scan is one full-page image, so a color placed behind it is hidden. The tool detects that and tells you to use Multiply or Darken, which tint the scan itself.
Yes. Set Images to “Keep images unchanged” and each image is cut out of the color layer using an even-odd clipping path, so the pixels underneath are never touched.
You can recolor PDFs up to 10MB and 100 pages. Larger documents are processed page by page with a progress bar you can cancel at any time.
Barely. Each recolored page gains a compressed content stream of roughly 150 bytes. A 200-page document grows by about 30KB, and the estimated output size is shown before you export.
Yes. Optimize for printing can lighten a heavy background to reduce ink coverage, write near-black as DeviceGray so a press uses black ink only instead of building rich black from four plates, and disable overprint on the color layer.