Stripboard Colors Explained (Full Color Code Reference)

Stripboard Colors Explained (Full Color Code Reference)

Stripboard colors encode two pieces of information at a glance: whether a scene is interior or exterior, and whether it's day or night. The four standard colors — white, yellow, blue, green — map to those four combinations and have been industry-standard since the cardboard-board era. Everything beyond those four is a convention (banners, day breaks, special strips) that varies slightly between tools and productions.

Below is the full reference, in one table.

The four core colors

Color	Time + Location	Used for
White	Day Interior	Interior scenes set during daytime
Yellow	Day Exterior	Exterior scenes shot in daylight
Blue	Night Interior	Interior scenes set at night
Green	Night Exterior	Exterior scenes shot at night

These four cover the majority of strips on any stripboard. The logic:

• Interior vs exterior matters because exteriors depend on natural light, weather, and permits; interiors don't.
• Day vs night matters because night shoots cost more, require different crew turnarounds, and often have tighter schedules.

A 1st AD looking at a stripboard sees clusters of green-and-yellow (exteriors) vs white-and-blue (interiors) and immediately understands the production's logistical shape.

Banners and dividers

Between groups of strips, stripboards use visual dividers. Conventions here vary more than the core four, but the common set:

Element	Color	Meaning
Black banner	Black / dark	Location change — new location group begins
Gray strip	Gray	Day break — end of a shoot day
Pink strip	Pink	Company move within a shoot day
Orange strip	Orange	Special notes (VFX plate day, insert day)
Red banner	Red	Holiday, hiatus, or forced day off

Not every tool uses all of these. Movie Magic Scheduling uses black banners and gray day breaks as defaults; Production Slate carries the same four-color strip convention, with day breaks as their own rows on the board. Other tools substitute their own palette but the functional categories are consistent.

Dusk, dawn, and ambiguous times

Scenes set during transition times don't fit cleanly into day/night. Conventions:

• Magic hour scenes typically use the color of the dominant time — a scene set "as the sun rises" shoots in Day Exterior conditions (yellow), even though story-time is technically dawn.
• Dusk scenes lean Night Exterior (green) if they shoot after sunset, Day Exterior if they shoot before.
• MOS (without sound) scenes use the same color as their time-of-day classification; MOS is a sound condition, not a time.
• Flashback scenes use the color of their shot time, not their story time.

The test: how will this scene actually be shot? That's the color. Story context is secondary.

Cast codes on strips

Not a color convention exactly, but worth covering here because cast IDs appear on every strip: each cast member gets a number at the start of prep. 1 = Lead, 2 = second lead, and so on. Strips list cast by ID rather than name, which keeps the strip readable at a glance.

Some productions print cast IDs on the strip in colored ink matching the character's department (lead cast in red, supporting in blue, day players in black). This is a convention, not a rule — if your production uses it, document it on the board; if it doesn't, skip.

Software variations

Different scheduling tools use slightly different default palettes. The four core colors (white/yellow/blue/green for day-int/day-ext/night-int/night-ext) are near-universal. The banner and special-strip colors vary:

• Movie Magic Scheduling — black banners, gray day breaks, pink for holidays, orange for work notes. The baseline most other tools defer to.
• Gorilla — similar to MM with minor color swaps.
• StudioBinder — follows MM conventions closely.
• Production Slate — the four core colors on every strip, plus day-break rows.
• Yamdu — EU-leaning tool with a slightly different default palette; customisable per-project.

If you're migrating between tools, the core four translate directly. The banner and special-strip colors may not; check the new tool's legend and adjust.

Variations by production type

Different genres and budgets extend the standard palette in predictable ways:

Studio features and TV — Often use a second-axis color (stripes or icons) to mark stunts, SFX, crane days, and effects-heavy scenes. These get reviewed at a production meeting; the color-coding aids the walk-through.

Indie features — Usually stick to the core four plus basic banners. Simpler boards are faster to read and easier for crew to absorb.

Commercials and music videos — Often collapse to just white/yellow/blue/green with a minimal banner set, because shoot lengths rarely exceed 5 days and the board fits on one screen.

Documentary — Sometimes ignores strip colors entirely because the "scene" concept doesn't apply cleanly. Many docs use scheduling tools optimised around location days rather than scripted scenes.

When to deviate from the standard

Don't. The four core colors exist because every department head over the age of 30 has read them for a decade, and any departure creates cognitive load for no benefit. If a production insists on a custom palette, print a color legend on every physical board and every digital export.

Custom banner colors are more defensible — black-banner-for-location is convention, not carved in stone — but keep the core four untouched.

Printable reference

Here's the full legend as a plain-text block you can paste into your production's internal docs or print and pin to the stripboard:

STRIPBOARD COLOR LEGEND

Core scene colors (time + location)
  WHITE   Day Interior    — INT. D
  YELLOW  Day Exterior    — EXT. D
  BLUE    Night Interior  — INT. N
  GREEN   Night Exterior  — EXT. N

Banners and dividers
  BLACK banner   Location change
  GRAY strip     Day break (end of shoot day)
  PINK strip     Company move within a day
  ORANGE strip   Special notes (VFX plate, insert day)
  RED banner     Holiday, hiatus, forced day off

Cast reference
  Cast listed by ID, not name (1 = Lead, 2 = second lead, etc.)

Ambiguous-time scenes pick the color of their shoot conditions,
not their story time. Magic hour = Day Exterior (yellow).

Next step

If you're new to stripboards, start with what is a stripboard in film for the full anatomy, then how to make a stripboard for the build process. For scheduling software that uses the standard palette out of the box, Production Slate's schedule feature applies these colors automatically from your script's sluglines — no manual color assignment required.