jb Capacitor Colour Code

A colour code was used on polyester capacitors for many years. It is now obsolete, but of course there are many still around. The colours should be read like the resistor code, the top three colour bands giving the value in pF. Ignore the 4th band (tolerance) and 5th band (voltage rating).

For example:brown, black, orange  means 10000pF = 10nF = 0.01µF.

Note that there are no gaps between the colour bands, so 2 identical bands actually appear as a wide band.

For example:wide red, yellow   means 220nF = 0.22µF.