SVG Colouring Paths

— 5 minute read

Since we did our SVG Sprites yesterday, I was thinking if it was possible to colour each specific path. And it turns out you can do so.

So for my example I took an icon existing of four elements, a man and a woman and the heads are separate from the bodies.

HTML Structure

<svg
  aria-hidden="true"
  style="position: absolute; width: 0; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"
  version="1.1"
  xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
  xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
>
  <defs>
    <symbol id="icon-man-woman" viewBox="0 0 32 32">
      <path
        d="M8 3c0 1.657-1.343 3-3 3s-3-1.343-3-3c0-1.657 1.343-3 3-3s3 1.343 3 3z"
      ></path>
      <path
        d="M26 3c0 1.657-1.343 3-3 3s-3-1.343-3-3c0-1.657 1.343-3 3-3s3 1.343 3 3z"
      ></path>
      <path
        d="M8 8h-6c-1.105 0-2 0.895-2 2v10h2v12h2.5v-12h1v12h2.5v-12h2v-10c0-1.105-0.895-2-2-2z"
      ></path>
      <path
        d="M30.469 16l1.531-1.109-4.165-6.441c-0.185-0.281-0.499-0.45-0.835-0.45h-8c-0.336 0-0.65 0.169-0.835 0.45l-4.165 6.441 1.531 1.109 3.458-4.487 1.202 2.804-4.191 7.683h3.833l0.667 10h2v-10h1v10h2l0.667-10h3.833l-4.191-7.683 1.202-2.804 3.458 4.487z"
      ></path>
    </symbol>
  </defs>
</svg>

<svg class="icon icon-man-woman">
  <use xlink:href="#icon-man-woman"></use>
</svg>

As you can see there are four paths in our definition symbol.

So how do we go about styling them all a different colour?

Styling a CSS Path

I'm going to use the nth-child selector for each specific path.

#icon-man-woman {
  path {
    &:nth-child(1) {
      fill: #83c5be;
    }
    &:nth-child(2) {
      fill: #ffddd2;
    }
    &:nth-child(3) {
      fill: #006d77;
    }
    &:nth-child(4) {
      fill: #e29578;
    }
  }
}

This will result in the following:

See the Pen SVG Colouring Paths by Chris Bongers (@rebelchris) on CodePen.

Browser Support

The support is pretty strong!

SVG Fragment support

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