Add Background Color to PDF: Tint Pages Cream, Blue or Any Colour

1. 00

   What's great about our PDF background colour tool

   • Your PDFs never leave your device. Every page is changed right in your browser.
   • Five soft colours and your own, with a strength slider.
   • Tint all pages or only the ones you pick.
   • Text, fonts and links are untouched, so text stays selectable and searchable.
   • Tint many PDFs at once, with a ZIP download.
   • Free, no limits, no watermark, and it works offline after your first visit.
2. 01

   Add your PDFs

   Choose PDFs or drag them into the preview. Use Add More to add others later. Click pages to tint only some of them, or leave nothing picked to change every page.

3. 02

   Choose the colour

   Pick a Colour and a Strength. The preview shows every changed page as it will be saved.

4. 03

   Add Background and download

   Click Add Background, then Download. Change anything and the button goes back to Add Background, ready for another run. Several PDFs download together as a ZIP.

5. 04

   Loved it?

   • If you're on computer, bookmark this page to your browser.
   • If you're on mobile, add it to your home screen for one-tap access and offline use.
     • Android: Visit this page in Google Chrome > tap three-dot icon (⋮) at top > Install and create shortcut.
     • iPhone and iPad: Visit this page in Safari > tap menu icon in address bar > Share > Add to Home Screen.

How it works

A flat colour is laid over each page you chose, using the standard PDF Multiply blend. White paper takes the colour, and dark text stays dark. The page itself is never redrawn, so text, fonts and links stay as they were.

After the file is made, it is opened again and compared with your original: the page count, text, rotation and links must all match what they should. If anything differs, no file is produced for that PDF.

Frequently asked questions

• Is my PDF uploaded anywhere? No. Everything happens in your browser, on your device. Your PDF is never sent to a server.
• Can I change only some of the pages? Yes. Click pages in the preview to pick them (or drag across several), use All, First, Last, Odd or Even, or type a range such as 1-3, 5. With nothing picked, every page is changed. Pages you do not pick stay exactly as they were.
• How does the colour go on? The colour is laid over the page with a standard multiply blend, like coloured glass. White becomes the colour, and dark text stays dark. Photos and coloured areas are tinted by it too.
• Why is my dark text not changed? Multiply keeps dark things dark, so black text stays black. That is what makes it work as a background.
• Does a page that is already coloured change? Yes. Every colour on the page is tinted by the new colour. A page with a coloured background ends up a mix of the two.
• Is the page turned into a picture? No. A layer is added over the page, so text, fonts, vector graphics and links stay exactly as they were, and the text stays selectable and searchable.
• Can I remove the background later? No. It is part of the page. Keep your original file if you might want the page without it.
• Which PDFs are not supported? Password-protected PDFs cannot be processed. Remove the password first with PDF Password Unlock. Digitally signed PDFs can be processed, but rewriting the file invalidates the signature.

What happens to your file

Nothing is uploaded, stored on a server or tracked. Your PDFs stay in your browser's memory until you remove them or close the page. The background becomes part of each page, so it cannot be switched off afterwards.

How to get the most out of it

• A pale cream is easy on the eyes for reading on screen.
• Lower the Strength for a subtle tint.
• To tint to gray instead, use Grayscale PDF. For a dark page, use Invert PDF Colors.
• Keep your original file. The changes cannot be undone once the PDF is saved.