you should cout this in order to get colored output on terminal: \033[m\033[0m color codes : 30-37: Foreground colors (30=black, 31=red, 32=green, 33=yellow, 34=blue, 35=magenta, 36=cyan, 37=white) 40-47: Background colors (same color order as foreground) 0: Reset to default 1: Bold/bright 4: Underline in order to use color + bold/underline you should use ; coloumn e.g. std::cout << "\033[31mThis is red text\033[0m" << std::endl; std::cout << "\033[32mThis is green text\033[0m" << std::endl; std::cout << "\033[1;34mThis is bold blue text\033[0m" << std::endl;