set-foreground-color uses a color chooser: read-color. customize-face uses something else which looks more readable IMO, though the usefulness of the underline is debatable: https://necromuralist.github.io/posts/changing-emacs-font-colors/color_selector.png Other commands like set-face-foreground, highlight-regexp and others show only color names, but not the colors themselves. All color input commands should use a common color selector which shows the actual colors too.