This text is purple and the page background is yellow! All without any HTML.

Note that this is a horrible background color. Don't use it. Try to stay away from solid natural colors like yellow, orange, blue, green, and red backgrounds... backgrounds should be black, white, or a softer color like cream or shades of colors.

Want to know what looks good with what? Use the Color schemer!

Colors can be given in words or in what's called "hex" code. Here's a reference for hex codes because I will not expect you to remember them. When you do web design a lot some of them become ingrained in your mind, like white, blue, red, black, and others. Many image editing programs let you copy the color hex code.

Here's how you'd make the background white using hex code:

    body { background-color:#ffffff; }
        

Words are a good way to do colors at first, but they don't offer many nice background colors... you can get a list of all accepted background color names here: http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_colornames.asp

Want to experiment? Try this.