Styling twitter bootstrap buttons

Twitter-Bootstrap buttons are awesomely beautiful. Try them out by scrolling over them

But they are limited in colors.

Is there any way I could change the base color of the button while keeping the beautiful hover-over effect that bootstrap has made so beautiful and effortless?

I am completely unaware of what the css/javascript looks like that twitter uses to maintain those effects.

I found the simplest way is to put this in your overrides. Sorry for my unimaginative color choice

Bootstrap 4-Alpha SASS

.my-btn {
  //@include button-variant($btn-primary-color, $btn-primary-bg, $btn-primary-border);
  @include button-variant(red, white, blue);
}

[Bootstrap 4 Alpha SASS Example][5]

Bootstrap 3 LESS

.my-btn {
  //.button-variant(@btn-primary-color; @btn-primary-bg; @btn-primary-border);
  .button-variant(red; white; blue);
}

[Bootstrap 3 LESS Example][1]

Bootstrap 3 SASS

.my-btn {
  //@include button-variant($btn-primary-color, $btn-primary-bg, $btn-primary-border);
  @include button-variant(red, white, blue);
}

[Bootstrap 3 SASS Example][2]

Bootstrap 2.3 LESS

.btn-primary {
  //.buttonBackground(@btnBackground, @btnBackgroundHighlight, @grayDark, 0 1px 1px rgba(255,255,255,.75));
  .buttonBackground(red, white);
}

[Bootstrap 2.3 LESS Example][3]

Bootstrap 2.3 SASS

.btn-primary {
  //@include buttonBackground($btnPrimaryBackground, $btnPrimaryBackgroundHighlight); 
  @include buttonBackground(red, white); 
}

It will take care of the hover/actives for you

From the comments, if you want to lighten the button instead of darken when using black (or just want to inverse) you need to extend the class a bit further like so:

Bootstrap 3 SASS Ligthen

.my-btn {
  // @include button-variant($btn-primary-color, $btn-primary-bg, $btn-primary-border);
  $color: #fff;
  $background: #000;
  $border: #333;
  @include button-variant($color, $background, $border);
  // override the default darkening with lightening
  &:hover,
  &:focus,
  &.focus,
  &:active,
  &.active,
  .open > &.dropdown-toggle {
    color: $color;
    background-color: lighten($background, 20%); //10% default
    border-color: lighten($border, 22%); // 12% default
  }
}

[Bootstrap 3 SASS Lighten Example][4]

[1]: http://codepen.io/chrisan/pen/nsEJf "Boostrap 3 LESS Example" [2]: http://codepen.io/chrisan/pen/aArJt "Bootstrap 3 SASS Example" [3]: http://codepen.io/chrisan/pen/EHnkq "Bootstrap 2.3 LESS Example" [4]: http://codepen.io/chrisan/pen/EaLaBe "Boostrap 3 SASS Lighten Example" [5]: http://codepen.io/chrisan/pen/LVKBby "Bootstrap 4 Alpah SASS Example"

You can overwrite the colors in your css, for example for Danger button:

.btn-danger { border-color: #[insert color here]; background-color: #[insert color here];

.btn-danger:hover { border-color: #[insert color here]; background-color: #[insert color here]; }

Here is a good resource: http://charliepark.org/bootstrap_buttons/

You can change color and see the effect in action.

Basically, the buttons in Twitter Bootstrap are controlled in CSS by ".btn{}". What you have to do is go to the CSS file and find where it says "btn" and change the color settings. However, it's not as simple as just doing that since you also have to change what color the button changes into when you highlight it, etc. To do THAT, you have to look for other tags in CSS like ".btn:hover{}", etc.

Changing it requires changing of the CSS. Here is a quick link to that file:

https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/blob/master/dist/css/bootstrap.css

If you are already loading your own custom CSS file after loading bootstrap.css (version 3) you can add these 2 CSS styles to your custom.css and they will override the bootstrap defaults for the default button style.

.btn-primary:hover, .btn-primary:focus, .btn-primary:active, .btn-primary.active, .open .dropdown-toggle.btn-primary {

  background-color: #A6A8C1;
  border-color: #31347B;
 }
  
.btn
{
  background-color: #9F418F;
  border-color: #9F418F;
}

Instead of changing CSS values one by one I would suggest to use http://lesscss.org/">LESS.</a> Bootstrap has LESS version on Github: https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap

LESS allows you to define variables to change colors which makes it so much more convenient. Define color once and LESS compiles CSS file that changes the values globally. Saves time and effort.

In order to completely override the bootstrap button styles, you need to override a list of properties. See the below example.

    .btn-primary, .btn-primary:hover, .btn-primary:focus, .btn-primary.focus, 
    .btn-primary:active, .btn-primary.active, .btn-primary:visited,
    .btn-primary:active:hover, .btn-primary.active:hover{
        background-color: #F19425;
        color:#fff;
        border: none;
        outline: none;
    }

If you don't use all the listed styles then you will see the default styles at performing actions on button. For example once you click the button and remove mouse pointer from button, you will see the default color visible. Or keep the button pressed you will see default colors. So, I have listed all the pseudo-styles that are to be overridden.

For Bootstrap for Sass override it's

.btn-default {

    @include button-variant($color, $background, $border);

}

You can see the source for it here: https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap-sass/blob/a5f5954268779ce0faf7607b3c35191a8d0fdfe6/assets/stylesheets/bootstrap/mixins/_buttons.scss#L6

Or try http://twitterbootstrapbuttons.w3masters.nl/. It creates css for buttons based on html color input. Add the css after the bootstrap css. It provides three styles of buttons (light, dark and spin).

Here is a very easy and eficient way: add in your CSS your class with the colors you want to apply to your button:

.my-btn{
    background: #0099cc;
    color: #ffffff;
}
.my-btn:hover { 
  border-color: #C0C0C0; 
  background-color: #C0C0C0; 
}

and add the style to your bootstrap button or link:

<a href="xxx" class="btn btn-info my-btn">aaa</a>

In http://twitterbootstrap.org" title="example">Twitter Bootstrap bootstrap 3.0.0, Twitter button is flat. You can customize it from http://getbootstrap.com/customize. Button color, border radious etc.

Also you can find the HTML code and others functionality http://twitterbootstrap.org/bootstrap-css-buttons.

Bootstrap 2.3.2 button is gradient but 3.0.0 ( new release ) flat and looks more cool.

and also you can find to customize the entire bootstrap looks and style form this resources: http://twitterbootstrap.org/top-5-customizing-bootstrap-resources/

I know this is an older thread, but just to add another perspective. I'd assert that using overrides is really a bit of a code smell and will quickly get out of hand on larger projects. Today you're overriding Buttons, tomorrow Modals, the next day it Dropdowns, etc., etc.

I'd advise to try possibly commenting out the include for buttons.less and either define my own, or, find another Buttons library that's more suitable to my project. Shameless plug: here's an example of how easy it is to mix our Buttons library with TB: Using Buttons with Twitter Bootstrap. In practice, again, you'd likely want to remove the buttons.less include altogether to improve performance but this shows how you can make things look a bit less "generic". I haven't done this exercise yet myself but I'd imagine you could start by simply commenting out lines like:

https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/blob/master/less/bootstrap.less#L17

And then recompiling using `lessc using one of your own buttons modules. That way you get the battle tested core of TB but can still customize things without resorting to major overrides. There's absolutely no reason not to use only parts of a library like Bootstrap. Of course the same applies to the Sass version of TB

For Bootstrap (at least for version 3.1.1) and LESS, you can use this:

.btn-my-custom {
    .button-variant(@color; @background; @border)
}

This is defined in bootstrap/less/buttons.less.

You can change background-color and use !important;

.btn-primary {
  background-color: #003c79 !important;
  border-color: #15548b !important;
  color: #fff;
}

.btn-primary:hover {
  background-color: #4289c6 !important;
  border-color: #3877ae !important;
  color: #fff;
}

.btn-primary.focus, .btn-primary:focus {
   background-color: #4289c6 !important;
   border-color: #3877ae !important;
   color: #fff;
}