Sierra Chart footprint color settings: a legible scheme for volume, imbalances and bid ask contrast

What good sierra chart footprint color settings look like

Good Sierra Chart footprint color settings use one calm background, two clearly separated hues for bid and ask volume, intensity that scales with volume, and one reserved accent color for imbalances. Everything else, including grid lines, bar outlines and labels, stays muted so it does not compete with the numbers. You set these colors in the Numbers Bars study settings and the chart's graphics settings, then save them so the scheme survives your next layout change.

This article covers color only. It assumes your footprint already displays bid and ask volume. If it does not, start with the Sierra Chart footprint chart setup guide, and make sure tick by tick data is enabled (Global Settings >> Data/Trade Service Settings >> Intraday Data Storage Time Unit set to 1 tick).

Why color is a reading problem, not a styling problem

A footprint packs a lot of information into each bar: bid volume, ask volume, delta, totals and sometimes imbalance markers, repeated at every price level. On ES or NQ, with a 0.25 tick size, a single 5-minute bar during the open can span dozens of rows. On CL, with a 0.01 tick, the row count can be even higher. When every cell is brightly colored, your eye has nothing to prioritize.

A useful scheme follows a simple hierarchy:

1. Background and structure: nearly invisible.
2. Ordinary volume: readable but quiet.
3. Heavy volume: noticeably stronger.
4. Imbalances and the bar's high volume level: the only things that jump out.

If more than one or two elements per bar grab your attention, the scheme is too loud.

Where the color settings live in Numbers Bars

Footprints in Sierra Chart are built with the Numbers Bars study. To reach its settings, open Analysis >> Studies, select Numbers Bars in the list of studies on the chart, and open its settings. Color entries are spread over two areas:

• The Subgraphs tab, which lists the individual elements the study draws (text, backgrounds, highlights, outlines) with a color and often a second color for each.
• The Settings and Inputs tab, which holds inputs that control how coloring is applied, for example whether backgrounds are colored by volume, by delta or by bid ask comparison, and whether imbalance highlighting is on.

Exact subgraph and input names change between Sierra Chart versions, so do not rely on a memorized list. Read the descriptions in the Numbers Bars documentation alongside your own study window. A practical habit is to change one color, apply, and see which element on the chart changed. That is the fastest way to map names to what you see.

Chart background, grid and general text colors are chart-level graphics settings rather than study settings. The Chart Settings documentation is the reference for chart-level options. Check your version's menus for where graphics and color settings are located.

Build the scheme in layers

Layer 1: background and structure

Pick a background first, because every other color is judged against it. Dark charcoal or off-white both work. Pure black with saturated colors tends to cause glare during long sessions, and pure white makes pale cell colors disappear.

Then tone down the structure:

• Grid lines: very close to the background color, or off.
• Bar outlines: a mid gray, thin.
• Price scale and labels: a neutral gray rather than white or black.

The test: squint at the chart. If you can still see the grid clearly, it is too strong.

Layer 2: bid ask contrast

Bid ask contrast is the core of a footprint. Assign one hue family to bid volume (sellers hitting the bid) and another to ask volume (buyers lifting the offer). The classic choice is red for bid and green for ask, but it is not the only good one.

Roughly one in twelve men has some form of red-green color vision deficiency. Blue for ask and orange for bid reads well for most people and still feels intuitive. Whatever you pick, keep it consistent with your DOM and other order flow charts so you never have to translate colors between windows.

Keep the text color for ordinary cells neutral (light gray on dark, dark gray on light). Let the background or a subtle tint carry the bid ask side, not bright text. Bright colored text on a colored background is usually the first thing that makes a footprint unreadable.

Layer 3: volume intensity

Numbers Bars can scale background color with volume, so low-volume cells stay pale and high-volume cells get darker or more saturated. Look for inputs that set a high and a low color, or a gradient, and pick a narrow range. A pale tint to a medium tone is usually enough. If your highest volume color is as loud as your imbalance accent, the hierarchy collapses.

Check the scaling on a busy instrument and a quiet one. A gradient that looks balanced on ES during regular hours can leave almost every cell pale on a slow overnight session, or flatten everything on a high volume CL inventory release. If the study offers a choice between scaling within each bar and scaling across the visible chart, test both. Per bar scaling shows the structure inside each bar, while chart-wide scaling makes bars comparable to each other.

For what the underlying values mean, see the guide to Numbers Bars calculated values.

Imbalance highlighting without visual noise

Imbalance highlighting should be the loudest element on the chart, which is exactly why it needs restraint.

• Reserve one accent per side: for example a strong cyan for ask imbalances and a strong magenta for bid imbalances, or brighter versions of your bid ask hues. Do not reuse these colors anywhere else.
• Prefer a highlight style that changes one thing. A bold text color, an outline or a solid background all work, but combining all three on every imbalance creates clutter.
• Make stacked imbalances easy to spot. If consecutive imbalanced rows share the same accent, the stack reads as a single vertical stripe without any extra marker.

Color cannot fix a threshold that fires too often. If half the cells in an NQ bar are highlighted, the issue is the imbalance ratio or minimum volume, not the palette. The ratio, minimum volume and diagonal comparison logic are covered in Sierra Chart diagonal imbalance settings. Tune those first, then return to color.

The point of control and delta rows

Most traders also want the bar's highest volume price and the delta visible:

• Bar POC: use an outline or border rather than a fill, in a neutral bright color such as yellow or white. An outline stays readable on top of any bid ask tint.
• Delta and totals rows: if you display summary rows under the bar, color positive and negative delta with the same hue families you use for ask and bid. Keep the values in text color, with only a light tint behind them, so they do not compete with imbalances.

A starting palette to adapt

On a dark charcoal background, a scheme that works well as a baseline:

• Ordinary text: light gray.
• Ask side tint: desaturated blue, darker with volume.
• Bid side tint: desaturated orange, darker with volume.
• Ask imbalance: bright cyan text or outline.
• Bid imbalance: bright magenta text or outline.
• Bar POC: yellow outline.
• Grid: off, or one step lighter than the background.

Treat it as a starting point, not a standard. Your monitor, room lighting and eyes matter more than any preset.

Check legibility before you trust the scheme

Run these checks on a real session, not a single screenshot:

1. Zoom out to your normal bar spacing. Can you still identify imbalances without reading numbers?
2. Look at the open on ES and NQ and a quiet midday period. Does the gradient still show contrast in both?
3. Load CL. With 0.01 ticks, rows get dense. If text becomes illegible, increase the price increment per row or reduce font size before changing colors.
4. Check a forex footprint such as EURUSD futures (6E) if you trade it, since volume levels differ from equity index futures.
5. Step away for a minute, come back and note where your eye lands first. It should be imbalances or the POC, nothing else.

Save the scheme so you keep it

Once you are satisfied, save it. Saving the chartbook (.Cht) preserves the chart and its studies. To reuse the Numbers Bars colors on other charts, save the study as a study collection (.stdycllct), which is stored in the Data Files Folder shown in Global Settings >> General Settings. The Study Collections documentation explains how to save and apply them. Before experimenting further, save a copy of the chartbook under a new name so you always have a working version to return to.

If you would rather start from a footprint that already has a layered palette, bid ask contrast and imbalance highlighting configured, a Sierra Chart footprint chartbook gives you a baseline to adjust instead of a blank study.

Conclusion

A legible footprint is about hierarchy, not decoration. Mute the structure, separate bid and ask with two consistent hues, let volume intensity stay subtle, and reserve one loud accent for imbalances and an outline for the POC. Tune imbalance thresholds before colors, test across busy and quiet sessions on ES, NQ and CL, then save the result as a chartbook and study collection. To skip the initial setup work, you can explore the ready-to-use Sierra Chart chartbooks at SierraOnShop.

FAQ

Should footprint text or background carry the bid ask color?

Usually the background. A light tint behind neutral text keeps numbers readable, while bright colored text on colored cells quickly becomes hard to read on dense bars.

Can I use different color schemes for different instruments?

Yes. Each chart has its own Numbers Bars instance, so you can save separate study collections, for example one tuned for ES and another for CL, and apply whichever fits the chart.

Why do my colors look different on another monitor?

Monitors vary in brightness, contrast and color calibration. Pale tints are the most affected, so recheck your low volume colors whenever you change screens.

Will changing colors affect the imbalance calculation?

No. Colors only change how results are displayed. Which cells count as imbalances depends on the imbalance inputs, such as the ratio and minimum volume.