How to customize terminal colors in PuTTY

Customizing terminal colors in PuTTY improves readability, reduces eye strain, and makes multiple sessions easier to differentiate at a glance. A sensible palette keeps warnings visible and late-night maintenance from turning into a guessing game.

PuTTY renders text using a per-session palette that maps the default foreground/background, cursor colours, and the standard ANSI colour set. When software on the remote host emits ANSI escape sequences, PuTTY translates them into the corresponding palette entries to render the final on-screen colours.

Palette changes apply to session profiles and take effect for new terminal windows opened from that profile, while unsaved changes are discarded when PuTTY closes. Low-contrast combinations can hide prompts and error messages, and system-colour settings can override manual palette edits unless disabled.

Related: How to set the default terminal font in PuTTY
Related: How to set a custom window size in PuTTY

Steps to customize terminal colors in PuTTY:

  1. Launch PuTTY.
  2. Select the target entry under Saved Sessions and click Load.

    Loaded session settings become the editable baseline across all categories, including Colours.

  3. Open the Colours page under Window.
  4. Clear Use system colours and Try system colours on the Colours page.

    System colours follow the Windows theme and can mask manual palette changes.

  5. Select the palette entry to change, such as Default Background.

    Selecting an entry populates its current Red, Green, and Blue values for incremental adjustments.

  6. Enter the desired values in the Red, Green, and Blue boxes and click Modify.

    Low-contrast foreground/background pairs can hide login prompts, password requests, and error text.

  7. Adjust additional entries such as Default Foreground, Cursor Colour, and the ANSI entries (for example, ANSI Red) as needed.

    Changing the ANSI palette affects remote tools that rely on ANSI escape sequences for colour output.

  8. Return to Session and click Save to persist the palette in the selected session profile.

    Saving overwrites the stored configuration for the selected session name, while saving Default Settings changes the default palette for new sessions.

  9. Click Open to start a connection using the updated session profile.
  10. Confirm the new colours in the terminal window.