C# WPF – Convert colour to brush for UI styling

Something that may be occasionally frustrating is trying to quickly colour a UI element on a WPF window programmatically when you know the colour code, or maybe even have a ‘color’ variable storing the colour for you. There can be various ways to do this depending on how you have your colour stored, so this post gives a couple of ways to convert a colour into a brush to style a UI element.

Converting from String

Converting a colour to a string can be done using a brush converter. It’s best if the string represents a colour code in a 6-digit hexadecimal format (“#FF0000” for example). Other variations may work but I’ve only tried and tested the one I’m about to show.

private void ConvertColour()
{
    var brush = (Brush)new System.Windows.Media.BrushConverter().ConvertFromString("#FF0000");
}

There are other ways to convert colours to brushes using the brush converter, including from objects, mostly inherited from TypeConverter. For a full list of methods available to the brush converter, see the MSDN article here.

Converting from System.Windows.Media.Color

Converting from a system colour can be done by an instantiation of the SolidColorBrush type and feeding it the colour as a parameter in the constructor, like so:

private void ConvertColour()
{
    var brush = new SolidColorBrush(System.Windows.Media.Colors.Goldenrod);
}

Alternatively, if you have the colour stored in a variable then you can convert it like this:

private void ConvertColour()
{
    Color col = System.Windows.Media.Colors.Goldenrod;
    var brush = new SolidColorBrush(col);
}

Conclusion

These methods provide two ways to convert a colour into a brush that you can then use to fill a rectangle or other UI element as necessary using programmatic means. I posted this because in the last few months I have had to do this a bit, and kept forgetting how each time I wanted to, so hopefully this will serve as a useful reminder.