How to set background color of a button in Java GUI?

Question

Below is the code which creates 9 buttons in gridlayout form on a specific pannel3. What i want is to make the background of each button black with grey text over it. Can anyone help please?

 for(int i=1;i<=9;i++)
 {
     p3.add(new JButton(""+i));
 }

Honestly, people, use an IDE. Auto-complete is one of the best ways to learn the language library, and method names are usually pretty self-explanatory. — Denis Tulskiy, Nov 14 '10 at 04:36
@JohnnyCoder, I guess I was frustrated and it was my way of saying rtfm. I still believe it's a good advice, though :) — Denis Tulskiy, Jun 02 '15 at 04:29

score 28 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 30 '15 at 15:01

28

Check out JButton documentation. Take special attention to setBackground and setForeground methods inherited from JComponent.

Something like:

for(int i=1;i<=9;i++)
{
    JButton btn = new JButton(String.valueOf(i));
    btn.setBackground(Color.BLACK);
    btn.setForeground(Color.GRAY);
    p3.add(btn);
}

edited Jan 30 '15 at 15:01

Suma

33,181
16
123
191

answered Nov 13 '10 at 14:22

Pablo Santa Cruz

176,835
32
241
292

17

This does not work with Java 8 on the Mac. The background color is the color behind the button. The button is then drawn on top of the black background and the button is gray with gray text. (you cannot read the text). In fact, it's worse... the black background isn't drawn at all unless `setOpaque(true)` is called first. – Jason Mar 10 '16 at 23:25
4

Doesn't work with Java 8. as @Jason said. The background color is the color behing the button. – William May 11 '18 at 20:52
3

Using `setBorderPainted(false)` would solve the above mentioned issue. – Homaei Jun 08 '20 at 05:17

score 12 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 06 '12 at 22:50

12

Simple:

btn.setBackground(Color.red);

To use RGB values:

btn[i].setBackground(Color.RGBtoHSB(int, int, int, float[]));

edited Dec 06 '12 at 22:50

Joe Doyle

6,363
3
42
45

answered Dec 06 '12 at 22:20

Ali Mohammadi

1,306
1
14
28

3

I like to use btn.setBackground(New Color(int, int, int)); for RGB values – Michael Arnold Jan 26 '16 at 02:02

score 3 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:31

3

Changing the background property might not be enough as the component won't look like a button anymore. You might need to re-implement the paint method as in here to get a better result:

enter image description here

edited May 23 '17 at 10:31

Community

1
1

answered Aug 07 '15 at 03:35

luca

7,178
7
41
55

dacwe · Answer 4 · 2010-11-13T14:39:14.090

2

for(int i=1;i<=9;i++) {
    p3.add(new JButton(""+i) {{
        // initialize the JButton directly
        setBackground(Color.BLACK);
        setForeground(Color.GRAY);
    }});
}

edited Nov 13 '10 at 14:39

answered Nov 13 '10 at 14:23

dacwe

43,066
12
116
140

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 13 '10 at 16:40

2

You may or may not have to use setOpaque method to ensure that the colors show up by passing true to the method.

answered Nov 13 '10 at 16:40

Tanner

1,214
3
12
16

score 2 · Answer 6 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

2

It seems that the setBackground() method doesn't work well on some platforms (I'm using Windows 7). I found this answer to this question helpful. However, I didn't entirely use it to solve my problem. Instead, I decided it'd be much easier and almost as aesthetic to color a panel next to the button.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

Community

1
1

answered Mar 22 '12 at 19:19

GregNash

1,316
1
16
25

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 13 '10 at 14:24

1

Use the setBackground method to set the background and setForeground to change the colour of your text. Note however, that putting grey text over a black background might make your text a bit tough to read.

answered Nov 13 '10 at 14:24

npinti

51,780
5
72
96

score 0 · Answer 8 · edited Mar 15 '23 at 08:27

I tried the previous solutions but still couldn't change the color. Came across another article and solved my problem. The button is made of different layers. Removing all of them helps:

    btn.setOpaque(true);
    btn.setContentAreaFilled(true);
    btn.setBorderPainted(false);
    btn.setFocusPainted(false);
    btn.setBackground(Color.GRAY); // for the background
    btn.setForeground(Color.white); // for the text

How to set background color of a button in Java GUI?

8 Answers8

Linked

Related