Urine Color

What can affect your result

• How much you have had to drink: pale straw to light yellow usually means plenty of fluid, while darker yellow or amber usually means more concentrated urine
• Foods: beets, blackberries, rhubarb and some food colorings can turn urine pink or red, and carrots can deepen the yellow
• Vitamins: B-complex vitamins and carotene can make urine dark yellow or orange
• Medicines: phenazopyridine and rifampin can turn urine orange to red, levodopa, metronidazole and nitrofurantoin can make it brown, and methylene blue or triamterene can make it green or blue
• Bleeding: blood from the kidneys or bladder, or vaginal bleeding mixing with the sample, can make urine look pink, red or brown
• Bile pigments and muscle breakdown products can turn urine dark brown, which is why clear dark-brown urine is worth mentioning to a clinician
• Who is looking and how: color is judged by eye or by an analyzer, and lighting and container size change how a shade looks, so one lab may write 'straw' where another writes 'yellow'
• Foods such as beets, blackberries, rhubarb, carrots and fava beans, and some food colorings, can change urine color.
• Vitamins (B-complex, riboflavin, carotene) and medicines (for example phenazopyridine, rifampin, levodopa, metronidazole, nitrofurantoin, methylene blue, triamterene) can change urine color without any health problem.
• Menstrual or vaginal bleeding mixing with the sample can make it look pink, red or brown; tell the person collecting the sample if you are having a period.
• Strongly colored urine, such as from phenazopyridine, can also interfere with the color pads on the dipstick.

Any time. A midstream clean-catch sample is preferred, and the sample should be examined within about two hours or kept refrigerated. Color reflects how concentrated your urine is right now, so it can change within hours with fluids, sweating, food or medicines.