from this blog post http://www.fizerkhan.com/blog/posts/What-I-learned-from-other-s-shell-scripts.html amazing cool bash colors

color.sh

#!/bin/bash

NORMAL=$(tput sgr0)
GREEN=$(tput setaf 2; tput bold)
RED=$(tput setaf 1)
YELLOW=$(tput setaf 3)

function red() {
        echo -e "$RED$*$NORMAL"
}

function yellow() {
        echo -e "$YELLOW$*$NORMAL"
}

function green() {
        echo -e "$GREEN$*$NORMAL"
}

green "[ok] - this should be green"
echo  "[ok] - this should be normal"
yellow "[warn] - this is a warning"
red "[err] - this is an error"
echo "[ok] - back to normal"