Working with hex strings and hex values more easily in Javascript

No, there is no way to tell the JavaScript language to use hex integer format instead of decimal by default. Your code is about as concise as it gets but note that you do not need to prepend the “0x” base indicator when you use “parseInt” with a base.

Here is how I would approach your problem:

function addHexColor(c1, c2) {
  var hexStr = (parseInt(c1, 16) + parseInt(c2, 16)).toString(16);
  while (hexStr.length < 6) { hexStr="0" + hexStr; } // Zero pad.
  return hexStr;
}

addHexColor('aaaaaa', '010101'); // => 'ababab'
addHexColor('010101', '010101'); // => '020202'

As mentioned by a commenter, the above solution is chock full of problems, so below is a function that does proper input validation and adds color channels separately while checking for overflow.

function addHexColor2(c1, c2) {
  const octetsRegex = /^([0-9a-f]{2})([0-9a-f]{2})([0-9a-f]{2})$/i
  const m1 = c1.match(octetsRegex)
  const m2 = c2.match(octetsRegex)
  if (!m1 || !m2) {
    throw new Error(`invalid hex color triplet(s): ${c1} / ${c2}`)
  }
  return [1, 2, 3].map(i => {
    const sum = parseInt(m1[i], 16) + parseInt(m2[i], 16)
    if (sum > 0xff) {
      throw new Error(`octet ${i} overflow: ${m1[i]}+${m2[i]}=${sum.toString(16)}`)
    }
    return sum.toString(16).padStart(2, '0')
  }).join('')
}

addHexColor2('aaaaaa', 'bogus!') // => Error: invalid hex color triplet(s): aaaaaa / bogus!
addHexColor2('aaaaaa', '606060') // => Error: octet 1 overflow: aa+60=10a