Default background color of SVG root element

Question

I\'d like to set a default background color for the entire SVG document, to red for example.

Answer 1

I'm currently working on a file like this:

And I tried to put this into style.css:

svg {
  background: #bf1f1f;
}

It's working on Chromium and Firefox, but I don't think that it's a good practice. EyeOfGnome image viewer doesn't render it, and Inkscape uses a special namespace to store such a background:

Well, it seems that SVG root element is not part of paintable elements in SVG recommandations.

So I'd suggest to use the "rect" solution provided by Robert Longson because I guess that it is not a simple "hack". It seems to be the standard way to set a background with SVG.