Urine Color Chart: What Each Shade Can Mean

Cleveland Clinic says the color of your pee relates mostly to how much you drink. Its guide to urine calls healthy urine light yellow, “like the color of light straw or lemonade,” and says the yellow comes from urochrome (urobilin). Foods, vitamins and medicines cause many of the other shades. Some colors are reasons to see a provider.

Clear to dark yellow

Cleveland Clinic’s urinalysis guide puts normal urine anywhere from colorless or pale yellow to deep amber, depending on how concentrated it is. Its urine changes page says pee should be clear to yellow if you drink a lot, and is usually darker yellow or slightly orange when you’re dehydrated.

The NHS counts dark yellow, strong-smelling pee among the symptoms of dehydration, says to drink fluids if you have them, and suggests drinking enough during the day that your pee is a pale colour. More on each end: clear urine and dark urine.

Other colors at a glance

Compiled from Cleveland Clinic and MedlinePlus:

Color	Everyday causes	Health causes
Bright yellow	B-complex vitamins
Orange	Carrots, vitamin C, carotene, phenazopyridine, rifampin, warfarin, some chemotherapy, recent laxative use	Liver or bile duct problems
Pink or red	Beets, blackberries, rhubarb, fava beans, food colorings, some medicines	Blood from a UTI, kidney stones, kidney or urinary tract injury, or a bladder or kidney tumor; hemolytic anemia; porphyria
Brown or cola	Beets, fava beans, blackberries or rhubarb (sometimes); some medicines	Liver disorders such as acute viral hepatitis or cirrhosis, severe dehydration, muscle breakdown (rhabdomyolysis), kidney disease
Green or blue	Artificial colors, black licorice, certain B vitamins, methylene blue, Tagamet	UTI, bilirubin
Cloudy or milky		UTI; bacteria, crystals, fat, blood cells or mucus in the urine
Foamy	Peeing very quickly, certain foods	Excess protein in the urine, a possible sign of kidney disease

A food only explains a color if you actually ate it. Cleveland Clinic says most urine changes aren’t due to a health concern and should return to normal within a day or two.

Pink, red or brown: could it be blood?

The NHS says blood in pee may look bright pink, red or dark brown. It may be something else if you recently ate beetroot, started a medicine that can turn pee red or brown, or are on your period. Still, the NHS says to get it checked if you think there’s blood, even a small amount or if you’re not sure. Blood in pee is not usually serious, it adds, but must be checked because it can be a sign of cancer, which may be easier to treat if found early.

A made-up week

Day	Color	Context
Mon	Dark yellow	Hot day, two glasses of water by 3 pm
Tue	Pink	Beet salad the night before
Thu	Orange	Started a vitamin C supplement
Fri	Smoky brown	No beets, no new medicine; still there Saturday

Monday’s dark yellow pee is on the NHS list of dehydration symptoms, though one entry can’t show that someone is dehydrated. The NHS advice is to drink fluids, and it also lists dark yellow pee among reasons to ask for urgent advice (see below). Tuesday has the beetroot explanation the NHS mentions, though it still says to get checked if you think it might be blood. Thursday matches Cleveland Clinic’s note about vitamin C. Friday has no food or medicine behind it, which puts it on MedlinePlus’s list for seeing a provider; if it might be blood, the NHS says to ask for an urgent GP appointment or contact NHS 111.

When to get checked

MedlinePlus says to see a provider for:

• an abnormal urine color that can’t be explained and doesn’t go away
• blood in your urine, even once
• clear, dark-brown urine
• pink, red or smoky-brown urine that isn’t due to a food or medicine

Cleveland Clinic says to seek medical attention for red, deep brown, bubbly or frothy pee, or a change lasting more than a few days that isn’t tied to food or a new medicine, especially with burning when you pee, fever or chills, unexplained fatigue or pain.

On its dehydration page, the NHS lists dark yellow pee or peeing less than normal among reasons to ask for an urgent GP appointment or contact NHS 111. It says to call 999 or go to A&E if someone with signs of dehydration is confused, sleepier than normal or hard to wake, has difficulty breathing or is taking lots of quick breaths, has cold skin, or has blue, grey, pale or blotchy skin, lips or tongue. Outside the UK, contact your doctor promptly, or your local emergency number in that last case. This article is general information, not medical advice.

How bellySignal helps

bellySignal records urine color on a 1 to 8 hydration scale. The scale is the app’s own guide, not a medical standard. You can mark unusual colors and persistent foam, log water in cups or mL, tag foods such as beets as triggers, and add notes like “started vitamin C.” The app doesn’t test urine or tell you whether a color is blood, but the log shows a provider when a color started and what you ate, drank or took before it.

Your diary is stored on your device, and you can start logging without signing up. Optional login, health platform sync, and export are available. Some health values, including stool type, symptoms, and manually entered weight, are also sent to PostHog, which is enabled by default. The analytics switch in settings controls PostHog only. Firebase Analytics receives usage events without those health values and remains active. Privacy policy.