Resistor Color Code Calculator
Tap the color on each strip, left to right, with the tolerance band (gold or silver, set apart) on the right.
-
Drag the handle along a strip, or click a color, to set that band.
Reading the bands
Hold the resistor with the gold or silver band on the right. The bands then read left to right: two digits (three on a 5-band part), a multiplier, and the tolerance. Red-red-black-brown-gold is 220 × 10 = 2.2 kΩ at 5%.
The tricks that help
When no band is obviously gold, the tolerance band usually stands a little apart from the rest. Brown, red, orange, yellow count 1-2-3-4 in rainbow order, which covers most of what you'll meet. And when the light is bad, red and orange are genuinely hard to tell apart on a dusty part: a multimeter settles it faster than squinting.