How to colorize git-status output?

From git config doc:

color.status.<slot>

Use customized color for status colorization. <slot> is one of:

• header (the header text of the status message),
• added or updated (files which are added but not committed),
• changed (files which are changed but not added in the index),
• untracked (files which are not tracked by git),
• branch (the current branch),
• nobranch (the color the no branch warning is shown in, defaulting to red),
• localBranch or remoteBranch (the local and remote branch names, respectively, when branch and tracking information is displayed in the status short-format),
• unmerged (files which have unmerged changes).

The values of these variables may be specified as in color.branch.<slot>.

So this will work:

git config color.status.changed blue
git config color.status.untracked magenta

However:

new files = green
deleted files = red

Isn't possible: you need to pick one color:

• if they are added to the index, they will use the color for color.status.added.
• if they aren't added to the index, they will use the color for color.status.changed.

Note:

Colors may also be given as numbers between 0 and 255; these use ANSI 256-color mode (but not all terminals may support this).
See "xterm 256 colors" for those numbers, as noted in the comments by Joshua Goldberg.

Of course, as commented by elboletaire:

Remember to enable coloring output if it has not been enabled previously:

git config --global color.ui true

Shaun Luttin adds:

The command can also take multiple parameters in quotes. This includes two colors (foreground background) from this list:

normal, black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan and white;

and it also includes one attribute (style) from this list:

bold, dim, ul, blink and reverse.

So this will work:

git config color.status.changed "blue normal bold"
git config color.status.header "white normal dim"

Note: with git 2.9.1 (July 2016), The output coloring scheme learned two new attributes, italic and strike, in addition to existing bold, reverse, etc.

See commit 9dc3515, commit 54590a0, commit 5621068, commit df8e472, commit ae989a6, commit adb3356, commit 0111681 (23 Jun 2016) by Jeff King (peff).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 3c5de5c, 11 Jul 2016)}

It also allow "no-" for negating attributes

Using "no-bold" rather than "nobold" is easier to read and more natural to type (to me, anyway, even though I was the person who introduced "nobold" in the first place). It's easy to allow both.