The TextField widget in Flutter is one of the most used widgets. It is used to get input from users. But sometimes you may want to change its default hint text color. So in this tutorial, we’ll see how to change hint text color in Flutter for TextField.
Here’s how it looks after changing color:

Here’s what we’ll cover:
- Steps to change hint text color in Flutter
- Changing hint text color globally
- Different ways of adding color
Steps to change hint text color in Flutter
You can change hint text color in Flutter, by adding style to the TextField widget. Basically, you provide the styling instructions by using the InputDecoration widget.
Here is the step by step instructions:
Step 1: Locate the file where you have placed the TextField
widget.
Step 2: Inside the TextField
widget, add the decoration
parameter and assign the InputDecoration
widget.
Step 3: Inside the InputDecoration
widget, add the hintStyle
parameter and assign the TextStyle
widget.
Step 4: Inside the TextStyle
, add color
parameter and set the color of your choice.
Step 5: Similarly, add the labelStyle
parameter (below hintStyle) and set the color.
Code Example
TextField( decoration: InputDecoration( hintText: "Name", hintStyle: TextStyle(color: Colors.purpleAccent), //<-- SEE HERE labelStyle: TextStyle(color: Colors.purpleAccent), //<-- SEE HERE ), )
Changing hint text color globally
In the previous section, we saw how to change the TextField hint text color at the page level. but sometimes you might be looking to have a common style across all the pages of your app. In that case, you might want to change the hint text color of the TextField widget at the app level.
You can change the TextField hint text color globally by defining the inputDecorationTheme and then adding the hintStyle
and labelStyle
widget.
Here’s how you do it:
Step 1: Locate the MaterialApp
widget.
Step 2: Inside the MaterialApp, add the theme
parameter with ThemeData
class assigned.
Step 3: Inside the ThemeData
add the inputDecorationTheme
parameter and then assign the InputDecorationTheme
.
Step 4: Inside the InputDecorationTheme
add the hintStyle
parameter and then assign the TextStyle
.
Step 5:Inside the TextStyle
add the color
parameter and set its color.
Code Example
MaterialApp( title: 'Flutter Demo', theme: ThemeData( primarySwatch: Colors.blue, inputDecorationTheme: const InputDecorationTheme( hintStyle: TextStyle(color: Colors.redAccent), //<-- SEE HERE labelStyle: TextStyle(color: Colors.redAccent), //<-- SEE HERE ), home: ChangeTextFieldBorderColorDemo(), );
Output

Different ways of adding color
There are main three ways you can add color to the TextField hint text widget.
Colors.red
: This is used to define from the predefined colors.Color(0xffF02E65)
: This is used to have a custom color.Color.fromARGB(255, 66, 125, 145)
: This is used to have color from the alpha, red, green, and blue color combination.
Code Example
TextField( decoration: InputDecoration( hintText: "Name", hintStyle: TextStyle(color: Colors.purpleAccent), labelStyle: TextStyle(color: Colors.purpleAccent), ), ), TextField( decoration: InputDecoration( hintText: "Email", hintStyle: TextStyle(color: Color(0xffF02E65)), labelStyle: TextStyle(color: Color(0xffF02E65)), ), ), TextField( decoration: InputDecoration( hintText: "Email", hintStyle: TextStyle(color: Color.fromARGB(255, 66, 125, 145)), labelStyle: TextStyle(color: Color.fromARGB(255, 66, 125, 145)), ), )
Conclusion
In this tutorial, we learned how to change hint text color in Flutter with practical examples, we first saw how to change the color at the page level and then explored the way to change color at the app level. Finally, we also learned what are the different ways to add colors.
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