Valorant: BEST Enemy Highlight Color Options

Enemy Highlight Color customization has been a part of Valorant since the game’s early beta period. It’s a crucial part of Valorant as it can single-handedly determine how well you can spot your enemies from afar. With some fairly distinct outline options, the community has constantly made side-by-side comparisons to determine the best enemy highlight color to use in Valorant.

Ranking The Enemy Highlight Color Options

Before we start, it’s worth noting that we’ll mainly be discussing the general aspects and pros and cons of each enemy highlight color. As such, the best highlight for you might also come down to personal preference, like your reaction time, familiarity, and colorblindness to certain colors.

Generally, the key aspects to consider when choosing the best enemy outline boil down to:

• Visibility at long-range which includes brightness, vibrance, and
• Blending consistency with environments
• Players’ reaction to spotting the color
• General Review by some of the best Valorant players

With all of that in mind, here’s the ranking for all available enemy highlight colors:

1. Yellow (Protanopia/Deuteranopia)

It’s no surprise that yellow, the brightest highlight color, would be the best option as an outline. Most Valorant pro players like TenZ, Scream, Brax, and HIKO use and prefer yellow as their main enemy highlight color and rarely ever change it themselves.

• Since it’s the brightest, yellow often sticks out like a sore thumb the most in nearly any location.
• Whether an enemy is hiding behind Radianite boxes or walls or sticking to a dark corner, one tiny silhouette of their gun or body will poke through and reveal their location.

• • It’s also one of the quickest colors to respond or react to.
  • Since it’s so bright, you’ll develop a habit of automatically shooting once you spot this color, thus speeding up your reaction time, a crucial aspect of Valorant.
  • Furthermore, its brightness and vibrancy significantly separate it from the environment.
  • Even in yellow-themed maps like Bind, Haven, and Ascent, you’ll likely never confuse an enemy with this highlight color since it’s so distinct.

• • One noticeable drawback of yellow is that when you recently change to it, you might find it confusing to differentiate between yellow-themed enemy and ally agents, specifically Killjoy and Raze.
  • However, the best way to solve this issue is by hopping into a few deathmatches and learning how to spot an enemy Killjoy or Raze with yellow as your enemy outline.

Protanopia vs Deuteranopia

There are two options of Yellow that you can select in Valorant – Protanopia and Deuteranopia. For most players, both of these versions will look completely the same. However, players with a colorblind deficiency, specifically green, will be able to spot green shades more quickly with Deuteranopia.

Similarly, players that have difficulty spotting red should use Protanopia as it helps identify red shades in-game. So, it comes to personal preference, although generally, these two look the same.

Yellow Summary

All in all, it’s tough to find any caveats for using yellow in matches. While agent-blending might be a considerable issue for this outline, it rarely happens and can be easily overcome. Visibility is the primary focus of an enemy outline in Valorant, and yellow is the most effective color in this regard.

2. Red

Red is the default enemy highlight option which most newcomers and veterans will be familiar with. It’s also the most popular outline in the Valorant community as most players, including pros like Sena and ACEU, don’t bother changing it to another color. Therefore, most clips you’ll see from Valorant players will likely have red as their enemy highlight color.

• • Most players will already feel right at home with color as it matches the “enemy” scheme, like the enemy smokes, enemy kills, and agents’ bar on top being red regardless of your outline.
  • Other popular competitive FPS games like CS: GO, and Splitgate also have red as their default option to highlight hostiles.
  • As such, this is the best enemy outline color in the game in terms of familiarity and having a natural look.
  • As far as brightness and visibility go, the red outline is fairly vibrant, and you can easily identify it in brighter Valorant maps like Split, Bind, and Lotus.
  • However, in darker tone maps like Pearl, you might confuse this outline with a random object at a distance. Red can also sometimes blend in dark corners of maps like Haven or Ascent.

Red Summary

Overall, Red is a decent enemy outline in Valorant, but it might hide in dark tones and shades. Fortunately, there’s no location or item with the same shade of red as this outline on any map, so it doesn’t blend in with any bright surroundings. Additionally, you could also increase Valorant’s vibrancy settings to make Red even more distinct and identifiable in matches.

3. Purple (Tritanopia)

Despite being a unique highlight color, purple barely has any tactical advantages over red or yellow. It’s the least bright option in the list. Thus, tracking it at long range can sometimes be difficult. Aside from its general pros and cons, this enemy highlight color is the recommended option for players with Tritanopia. In this condition, a person experiences difficulty differentiating between blue and yellow.

• • The first thing that you’ll notice about this outline color is that it’s fairly unique.
  • Not many competitive games like Valorant have this outline which is why most players who use it agree on it being a “pretty highlight color.”
  • But otherwise, that’s the only benefit it has over other available outlines.
  • Purple is not the most bright or most vibrant highlight color, so it doesn’t stand out as much as it should.
  • Although you can easily find it in well-lit maps like Bind or Haven, the effectiveness of this outline falls apart in maps with numerous dark corners like Ascent.
  • This highlight color is especially a complete nightmare on Icebox and Pearl since it blends too much with their environments.
  • These blue-themed maps, with their slight purplish hue, force you to see the outline twice before confirming it’s an enemy.

• • Similarly, this color can also attach itself to purple-themed agents like Reyna and Kay-O. When either of them is in their Ulted forms, you can hardly tell if they’re actually allies or enemies.

Purple Summary

All in all, Purple does look appealing and unique in its appearance but doesn’t have any outstanding tactical qualities. Its lack of contrast and brightness also means that you might struggle to find it in certain dim areas.

Which Enemy Highlight Color Should You Choose

Now that we’ve fully discussed all the enemy highlight colors let’s look at which one you should use. As seen, each highlight color has its own pros and cons.

• While some might have fewer general drawbacks, it comes back to personal preference.
• Just like sensitivity or crosshair settings, the best enemy outline color depends on what you feel is the most visible during gameplay.
• Therefore, play a few matches with each outline color and see which one stands out the most to you.
• The best way to figure this out is by either going through a series of Deathmatches, Unrated matches or testing the outline on bots in the Shooting Test. 

• • It’s also important to ensure that your enemy outline doesn’t match the same color as your crosshair in Valorant.
  • This is because you might confuse your crosshair’s placement with the enemy outline, thus compromising your overall accuracy.
  • So be sure to have a crosshair color that distinguishes itself from the enemy highlight color.

How To Change The Enemy Highlight Color

• To change the enemy highlight color, head over to the Settings menu by either clicking the cogwheel on the top right of the main menu screen or pressing the Esc key in-game.

• • Now click on the General Tab, and you’ll see the Enemy Highlight Color settings as the 2nd topmost option.
  • From here, you can choose any highlight color you want from the drop-down menu, and the settings will apply automatically.

Thanks to Valorant’s versatility, you can make these changes during matches, in practice modes, or in the game’s menu. Therefore, if you feel like one enemy highlight color isn’t hitting the mark or just want to make a quick comparison, then you can change them whenever you like in the game.

Conclusion

That wraps up our complete enemy highlight color comparison guide and how you can change it in the game. As mentioned, always test out all the outline options before you decide on your main one. Don’t try to replicate a specific pro player’s setup because they, too, have chosen their setup on personal bias. Go with your own instinct and choose the enemy highlight color you feel will get you easier kills.

If you want to know other tips and tricks for the game, here are the Best Valorant Aim Trainers in 2023 that can help you reach Radiant faster. You can also check out our Valorant FPS Optimization guide for PC to reduce system latency, stuttering, and ghosting. And why not improve the look and vibe of your inventory by reading up on the Best Valorant Skins.

Next:

• Valorant Character Tier List
• Valorant Knife Tier List
• The Best aim trainers in Valorant