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Change PDF Background Colour

Give a PDF a sepia, cream or custom paper colour for easier reading, with a vector mode that keeps text selectable and a multiply mode for scans.

Drop a PDF here or click to browseThe tint is applied in your browser — nothing is uploaded
Using #f4ecd8

“Behind the content” paints the colour under the page and keeps text, links and vector art intact — but it has no effect if the document already paints its own white background, which scans always do. Use “Multiply” for scanned pages: it re-renders each page as an image, so the text stops being selectable.

What is the Change PDF Background Colour?

Glaring white pages are tiring to read for hours, which is why every e-reader offers a sepia or cream paper mode.

  • Five reading-mode presets plus a full custom colour picker
  • Vector mode that keeps text selectable and searchable
  • Multiply mode that works on scans and photographed pages
  • Preserves each page's original rotation and size
  • First-page preview rendered from the finished file
  • Runs offline in your browser — nothing is uploaded

How to use the Change PDF Background Colour

  1. 1

    Drop the PDF onto the upload area.

  2. 2

    Choose a preset — sepia, cream, light grey, pale green or pale blue — or pick a custom colour.

  3. 3

    Choose how to apply it: behind the content for text PDFs, or multiply for scans.

  4. 4

    Set a rendering resolution if you picked multiply mode.

  5. 5

    Click Change Background, check the preview of page one and download the result.

About the Change PDF Background Colour

Glaring white pages are tiring to read for hours, which is why every e-reader offers a sepia or cream paper mode. PDFs rarely do. This tool paints the background of a PDF in the colour you choose so long documents are gentler on the eyes, indoors and at night.

There are two ways to apply it. “Behind the content” paints the colour under each page and leaves the text, links and vector artwork completely intact — perfect for a text PDF exported from Word or LaTeX. “Multiply” re-renders each page and blends the tint over it, which is what scanned pages need because a scan paints its own white background that would otherwise hide the colour.

Both modes run entirely in your browser with pdf-lib and pdf.js, so the document is never uploaded and nothing is stored anywhere. After processing, the first page of the finished file is rendered as a preview so you can judge the colour on a real page before downloading, and page sizes and rotation are preserved either way.

Frequently asked questions

How do I change a PDF background to sepia?

Upload the file, choose the Sepia preset and click Change Background. For a normal text PDF leave the mode on “behind the content”; for a scan, switch to multiply.

The colour did not show up on my scanned PDF. Why?

A scan paints its own white rectangle over the whole page, which covers anything drawn underneath. Switch to multiply mode: it blends the tint over the rendered page instead of behind it.

Which mode keeps the text selectable?

“Behind the content”. It draws a coloured rectangle and places the original page on top as vector artwork, so text, links and fonts survive. Multiply mode re-renders every page as an image, so the text becomes pixels.

Can I make a dark-mode PDF this way?

Not with multiply — multiplying by a dark colour makes black text disappear into a black page. For a true night mode, invert the colours first with the Invert PDF Colours tool.

Does the tinted PDF get bigger?

In vector mode, barely — you are adding one rectangle per page. In multiply mode the file is rebuilt from JPEG page images, so the size depends on the resolution you chose.

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