How to create alternating rows in a table?

Question

Sometimes you can see in books tables, that have alternating background color for rows in a table to support readability. How I can achieve this with LaTeX?

And yes, I could put macros \odd and \even into each row, but in that case I would have to change all following rows, if I input later another row into the table. I want TeX to decide itself, which row is odd or even and put the appropiate style into it.

Answer 1

You can use the features of the colortbl package with additions of xcolor. See code below for a small example.

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[table]{xcolor}    % loads also »colortbl«

\begin{document}
  \rowcolors{2}{gray!25}{white}
  \begin{tabular}{cc}
    \rowcolor{gray!50}
    Table head & Table head\\
    Some values & Some values\\
    Some values & Some values\\
    Some values & Some values\\
    Some values & Some values\\
  \end{tabular}
\end{document}

The particular package manuals have the details.

Answer 2

This can easily be achieved using xcolor. It is explained at Wikibooks, you just add the table option to \usepackage{xcolor} and in the table itself you put

\rowcolors{1}{color-1}{color-2}

Answer 3

One thing that might be worth pointing out, is that apparently, many packages call on xcolor, and I had endless clashes first time I tried it, and it took me such a long time to figure this one out, so I felt it might help someone as slow as me to mention this: The xcolor package should be loaded last (or at least after the clashing packages).

Answer 4

The environment {NiceTabular} of nicematrix has tools in order to color cells, rows and columns in a convenient way.

Morevorer, with nicematrix you won't have the thin white lines you see in some PDF viewers.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{nicematrix}

\begin{document}
\begin{NiceTabular}{cc}
\CodeBefore
  \rowcolor{gray!50}{1}
  \rowcolors{2}{gray!25}{white}
\Body
Table head & Table head\\
Some values & Some values\\
Some values & Some values\\
Some values & Some values\\
Some values & Some values\\
\end{NiceTabular}
\end{document}

You need several compilations (because nicematrix uses PGF/Tikz nodes under the hood).

You can also color the rows with any cycle of colors:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{nicematrix}

\begin{document}

\begin{NiceTabular}{c}
\CodeBefore
  \rowlistcolors{1}{red!15,blue!15,green!15}
\Body
  Mathilde \\
  Pierre \\
  Paul \\
  Juliette \\
  Jacques \\
  Antoine \\
  Emmanuelle \\
\end{NiceTabular}

\end{document}

Answer 5

This post says if you want to apply alternating colors (white, then lightgray) to all your tables, you can use pure TeX to "redefine the tabular environment":

\usepackage[table]{xcolor}
\definecolor{lightgray}{gray}{0.94}
\let\oldtabular\tabular
\let\endoldtabular\endtabular
\renewenvironment{tabular}{\rowcolors{2}{lightgray}{white}\oldtabular}{\endoldtabular}

I edited the example slightly to make white first, and the lightgray lighter.

Answer 6

An alternative solution with tblr and booktabs environments of tabularray package: alternating rows work well even if you have changed the vertical space between them.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{xcolor}

\usepackage{tabularray}
\UseTblrLibrary{booktabs}

\begin{document}

\begin{tblr}{
  colspec = {rccc},
  row{odd} = {blue8},
  row{even} = {azure8},
  row{1} = {purple8},
}  
\hline[2pt]
  Thing & Value & Value & Value \\
\hline[1pt]
      A & 1     & 2     & 3     \\
      B & 1     & 2     & 3     \\
      C & 1     & 2     & 3     \\
      D & 1     & 2     & 3     \\
      E & 1     & 2     & 3     \\
\hline[2pt]
\end{tblr}

\bigskip

\begin{booktabs}{
  colspec = {rccc},
  row{odd} = {blue8},
  row{even} = {azure8},
  row{1} = {purple8},
}
\toprule
  Thing & Value & Value & Value \\
\midrule
      A & 1     & 2     & 3     \\
\addlinespace[2pt]
      B & 1     & 2     & 3     \\
\addlinespace[2pt]
      C & 1     & 2     & 3     \\
\specialrule{2pt,teal5}{0pt}{2pt}
      D & 1     & 2     & 3     \\
\addlinespace[3pt]
      E & 1     & 2     & 3     \\
\bottomrule
\end{booktabs}

\end{document}

Answer 7

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[table]{xcolor}

\usepackage{multirow} 

\usepackage{float}
 \usepackage{graphicx} %rotate text
 \usepackage{colortbl}

\begin{document}







\begin{table}[ht]
\rowcolors{1}{}{lightgray}
\centering
\caption{Multirow table with continuous coloring.}\label{tab:multi row}
\begin{tabular}{p{5cm}p{5cm}}
\hline
Column 1 & Column 2\\
\hline
-&-\\
-&-\\
\cellcolor{green}&Single-row\\
\cellcolor{green}&Single-row\\
%\parbox[t]{2mm}{\multirow{-3}{*}{Rotating}} & working row \\
\cellcolor{green}\parbox[t]{2mm}{\multirow{-3}{*}{\rotatebox[origin=c]{90}{$job\_id$}}} & working row \\
-&-\\
-&-\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{table}%



\begin{table}[h]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{|c|l|r|r|r|r|}\hline
~ & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{Text} & {\hfill Text\hfill} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{Text} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{Text} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{Text} \\ \hline
\multirow{3}{*}{\rotatebox[origin=c]{90}{\parbox[c]{1cm}{\centering rotato-ata}}} & text &&&&\\
& text &testing A& testing B&&\\
& text &right aligned&&&\\ \hline
\end{tabular}
\end{table}


\begin{table}[ht]
\rowcolors{1}{}{lightgray}
\centering
\caption{Multirow table with all cells in the same color.}\label{tab:multi row}
\begin{tabular}{p{5cm}p{5cm}}
\hline
Column 1 & Column 2\\
\hline
-                       &       -       \\
-                       &       -       \\
\cellcolor{green} Text Green   &   Single-row  \\
\cellcolor{yellow} &   Single-row  \\
\multirow{-3}{*}{\cellcolor{red}Text of -3, Misplaced}&Single-row\\
-                       &       -       \\
-                       &       -       \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{table}%


\begin{table}[ht]
\rowcolors{1}{}{lightgray}
\centering
\caption{Multirow table with all rows in the same color.}\label{tab:multi row}
\begin{tabular}{p{5cm}p{5cm}}
\hline
Column 1 & Column 2\\
\hline
-                       &       -       \\
-                       &       -       \\
\rowcolor{green}        &   Single-row  \\
\rowcolor{yellow}       &   Single-row  \\
\rowcolor{red}\multirow{-3}{*}{Text}&Single-row\\
-                       &       -       \\
-                       &       -       \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{table}%



\end{document}