Read a resistor's color bands
The bands on a resistor are its value written in color — once the order clicks, you never need to guess.
Tools used in this guide
The job
A resistor on the bench says yellow-violet-red-gold. Read left to right (tolerance band sits slightly apart): yellow-violet = 47, red multiplier = ×100, so 4.7 kΩ ±5%.
4-band vs 5-band
4-band: two digit colors, one multiplier, one tolerance. 5-band adds a third digit for precise values — brown-black-black-red-brown is 10.0 kΩ ±1%, the precision series.
Gold and silver never appear as digits — in the multiplier band they mean ×0.1 and ×0.01, used for sub-ohm resistors.
Reading the real thing
Hold the resistor so the tolerance band (often gold or silver, and spaced apart) is on the right. On faded or colored bodies, lighting matters — when in doubt, verify with a multimeter.