Resistor Color Code

Short post today about resistors and the color codes that go with them.

When looking to size resistors for a project this chart below is great to have around or even memorized.



Here is how to read this chart, starting from left to right. You will know which side is which because the right side either has a gold, silver, or no band.

The first two colors are the first two numbers in the resistor and the third band is the the multiplier that tells you the size of the resistor. The last band on the far right is the tolerance of the resistor.

Example: Say you have a resistor that is Brown, Red, Orange with a silver band at the end. You go to the chart, see the brown is 1, red is 2, and orange is 3, or multiply by 1000. The silver band is a 10% tolerance + or - on the resistor. So the resistor becomes 12, multiplied by 1000, so 12000 or 12K ohms with 10% tolerance + or - so it could read anywhere from 13200 ohms to 10800.

The way I learned to read the third band is thats how many 0's you put at the end after getting the first two. Another example with how I read it. Orange, Orange, Green. So that would be 3,3, with 5 0's or 3300000 ohms.

Learning to read and use this chart is great when you need to see what the size of a resistor is and you don't have an ohmmeter around to check

A great way to help remember the color code order is to memorize this sentence

Bad Black-0
Beer Brown-1
Rots Red-2
Our Orange-3
Young Yellow-4
Guts Green-5
But Blue-6
Vodka Voliet-7
Goes Grey-8
Well White-9

Get Gold-5%
Some Silver-10%
Now None-20%