I already knew about the color escapes, I used them in my bash prompt a while ago. Thanks anyway.
What I wanted was to integrate it with the logging module, which I eventually did after a couple of tries and errors.
Here is what I end up with:

BLACK, RED, GREEN, YELLOW, BLUE, MAGENTA, CYAN, WHITE = range(8)

#The background is set with 40 plus the number of the color, and the foreground with 30

#These are the sequences need to get colored ouput
RESET_SEQ = "\033[0m"
COLOR_SEQ = "\033[1;%dm"
BOLD_SEQ = "\033[1m"

def formatter_message(message, use_color = True):
    if use_color:
        message = message.replace("$RESET", RESET_SEQ).replace("$BOLD", BOLD_SEQ)
    else:
        message = message.replace("$RESET", "").replace("$BOLD", "")
    return message

COLORS = {
    'WARNING': YELLOW,
    'INFO': WHITE,
    'DEBUG': BLUE,
    'CRITICAL': YELLOW,
    'ERROR': RED
}

class ColoredFormatter(logging.Formatter):
    def __init__(self, msg, use_color = True):
        logging.Formatter.__init__(self, msg)
        self.use_color = use_color

    def format(self, record):
        levelname = record.levelname
        if self.use_color and levelname in COLORS:
            levelname_color = COLOR_SEQ % (30 + COLORS[levelname]) + levelname + RESET_SEQ
            record.levelname = levelname_color
        return logging.Formatter.format(self, record)

And to use it, create your own Logger:

# Custom logger class with multiple destinations
class ColoredLogger(logging.Logger):
    FORMAT = "[$BOLD%(name)-20s$RESET][%(levelname)-18s]  %(message)s ($BOLD%(filename)s$RESET:%(lineno)d)"
    COLOR_FORMAT = formatter_message(FORMAT, True)
    def __init__(self, name):
        logging.Logger.__init__(self, name, logging.DEBUG)                

        color_formatter = ColoredFormatter(self.COLOR_FORMAT)

        console = logging.StreamHandler()
        console.setFormatter(color_formatter)

        self.addHandler(console)
        return


logging.setLoggerClass(ColoredLogger)

Just in case anyone else needs it.

Be careful if you're using more than one logger or handler: ColoredFormatter is changing the record object, which is passed further to other handlers or propagated to other loggers. If you have configured file loggers etc. you probably don't want to have the colors in the log files. To avoid that, it's probably best to simply create a copy of record with copy.copy() before manipulating the levelname attribute, or to reset the levelname to the previous value, before returning the formatted string (credit to Michael in the comments).

2022 solution, no additional packages required, Python 3

Define a class

import logging

class CustomFormatter(logging.Formatter):

    grey = "\x1b[38;20m"
    yellow = "\x1b[33;20m"
    red = "\x1b[31;20m"
    bold_red = "\x1b[31;1m"
    reset = "\x1b[0m"
    format = "%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s (%(filename)s:%(lineno)d)"

    FORMATS = {
        logging.DEBUG: grey + format + reset,
        logging.INFO: grey + format + reset,
        logging.WARNING: yellow + format + reset,
        logging.ERROR: red + format + reset,
        logging.CRITICAL: bold_red + format + reset
    }

    def format(self, record):
        log_fmt = self.FORMATS.get(record.levelno)
        formatter = logging.Formatter(log_fmt)
        return formatter.format(record)

Instantiate logger

# create logger with 'spam_application'
logger = logging.getLogger("My_app")
logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

# create console handler with a higher log level
ch = logging.StreamHandler()
ch.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

ch.setFormatter(CustomFormatter())

logger.addHandler(ch)

And use!

logger.debug("debug message")
logger.info("info message")
logger.warning("warning message")
logger.error("error message")
logger.critical("critical message")

Result

The full color scheme

For windows

This solution works on Mac OS, IDE terminals. Looks like the Windows command prompt doesn't have colors at all by default. Here are instructions on how to enable them, which I haven't try

Years ago I wrote a colored stream handler for my own use. Then I came across this page and found a collection of code snippets that people are copy/pasting :-(. My stream handler currently only works on UNIX (Linux, Mac OS X) but the advantage is that it's available on PyPI (and GitHub) and it's dead simple to use. It also has a Vim syntax mode :-). In the future I might extend it to work on Windows.

To install the package:

$ pip install coloredlogs

To confirm that it works:

$ coloredlogs --demo

To get started with your own code:

$ python
> import coloredlogs, logging
> coloredlogs.install()
> logging.info("It works!")
2014-07-30 21:21:26 peter-macbook root[7471] INFO It works!

The default log format shown in the above example contains the date, time, hostname, the name of the logger, the PID, the log level and the log message. This is what it looks like in practice:

NOTE: When using Git Bash w/ MinTTY

Git Bash on windows has some documented quirks: Winpty and Git Bash

Which for ANSI escape codes and for ncurses style character rewriting and animations, you need to prefix commands with winpty.

$ winpty coloredlogs --demo
$ winpty python your_colored_logs_script.py

Update: Because this is an itch that I've been meaning to scratch for so long, I went ahead and wrote a library for lazy people like me who just want simple ways to do things: zenlog

Colorlog is excellent for this. It's available on PyPI (and thus installable through pip install colorlog) and is actively maintained.

Here's a quick copy-and-pasteable snippet to set up logging and print decent-looking log messages:

import logging
LOG_LEVEL = logging.DEBUG
LOGFORMAT = "  %(log_color)s%(levelname)-8s%(reset)s | %(log_color)s%(message)s%(reset)s"
from colorlog import ColoredFormatter
logging.root.setLevel(LOG_LEVEL)
formatter = ColoredFormatter(LOGFORMAT)
stream = logging.StreamHandler()
stream.setLevel(LOG_LEVEL)
stream.setFormatter(formatter)
log = logging.getLogger('pythonConfig')
log.setLevel(LOG_LEVEL)
log.addHandler(stream)

log.debug("A quirky message only developers care about")
log.info("Curious users might want to know this")
log.warn("Something is wrong and any user should be informed")
log.error("Serious stuff, this is red for a reason")
log.critical("OH NO everything is on fire")

Output:

Quick and dirty solution for predefined log levels and without defining a new class.

logging.addLevelName( logging.WARNING, "\033[1;31m%s\033[1;0m" % logging.getLevelName(logging.WARNING))
logging.addLevelName( logging.ERROR, "\033[1;41m%s\033[1;0m" % logging.getLevelName(logging.ERROR))

Here is a solution that should work on any platform. If it doesn't just tell me and I will update it.

How it works: on platform supporting ANSI escapes is using them (non-Windows) and on Windows it does use API calls to change the console colors.

The script does hack the logging.StreamHandler.emit method from standard library adding a wrapper to it.

TestColorer.py

# Usage: add Colorer.py near you script and import it.
import logging
import Colorer

logging.warn("a warning")
logging.error("some error")
logging.info("some info")

Colorer.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
# encoding: utf-8
import logging
# now we patch Python code to add color support to logging.StreamHandler
def add_coloring_to_emit_windows(fn):
        # add methods we need to the class
    def _out_handle(self):
        import ctypes
        return ctypes.windll.kernel32.GetStdHandle(self.STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE)
    out_handle = property(_out_handle)

    def _set_color(self, code):
        import ctypes
        # Constants from the Windows API
        self.STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE = -11
        hdl = ctypes.windll.kernel32.GetStdHandle(self.STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE)
        ctypes.windll.kernel32.SetConsoleTextAttribute(hdl, code)

    setattr(logging.StreamHandler, '_set_color', _set_color)

    def new(*args):
        FOREGROUND_BLUE      = 0x0001 # text color contains blue.
        FOREGROUND_GREEN     = 0x0002 # text color contains green.
        FOREGROUND_RED       = 0x0004 # text color contains red.
        FOREGROUND_INTENSITY = 0x0008 # text color is intensified.
        FOREGROUND_WHITE     = FOREGROUND_BLUE|FOREGROUND_GREEN |FOREGROUND_RED
       # winbase.h
        STD_INPUT_HANDLE = -10
        STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE = -11
        STD_ERROR_HANDLE = -12

        # wincon.h
        FOREGROUND_BLACK     = 0x0000
        FOREGROUND_BLUE      = 0x0001
        FOREGROUND_GREEN     = 0x0002
        FOREGROUND_CYAN      = 0x0003
        FOREGROUND_RED       = 0x0004
        FOREGROUND_MAGENTA   = 0x0005
        FOREGROUND_YELLOW    = 0x0006
        FOREGROUND_GREY      = 0x0007
        FOREGROUND_INTENSITY = 0x0008 # foreground color is intensified.

        BACKGROUND_BLACK     = 0x0000
        BACKGROUND_BLUE      = 0x0010
        BACKGROUND_GREEN     = 0x0020
        BACKGROUND_CYAN      = 0x0030
        BACKGROUND_RED       = 0x0040
        BACKGROUND_MAGENTA   = 0x0050
        BACKGROUND_YELLOW    = 0x0060
        BACKGROUND_GREY      = 0x0070
        BACKGROUND_INTENSITY = 0x0080 # background color is intensified.     

        levelno = args[1].levelno
        if(levelno>=50):
            color = BACKGROUND_YELLOW | FOREGROUND_RED | FOREGROUND_INTENSITY | BACKGROUND_INTENSITY 
        elif(levelno>=40):
            color = FOREGROUND_RED | FOREGROUND_INTENSITY
        elif(levelno>=30):
            color = FOREGROUND_YELLOW | FOREGROUND_INTENSITY
        elif(levelno>=20):
            color = FOREGROUND_GREEN
        elif(levelno>=10):
            color = FOREGROUND_MAGENTA
        else:
            color =  FOREGROUND_WHITE
        args[0]._set_color(color)

        ret = fn(*args)
        args[0]._set_color( FOREGROUND_WHITE )
        #print "after"
        return ret
    return new

def add_coloring_to_emit_ansi(fn):
    # add methods we need to the class
    def new(*args):
        levelno = args[1].levelno
        if(levelno>=50):
            color = '\x1b[31m' # red
        elif(levelno>=40):
            color = '\x1b[31m' # red
        elif(levelno>=30):
            color = '\x1b[33m' # yellow
        elif(levelno>=20):
            color = '\x1b[32m' # green 
        elif(levelno>=10):
            color = '\x1b[35m' # pink
        else:
            color = '\x1b[0m' # normal
        args[1].msg = color + args[1].msg +  '\x1b[0m'  # normal
        #print "after"
        return fn(*args)
    return new

import platform
if platform.system()=='Windows':
    # Windows does not support ANSI escapes and we are using API calls to set the console color
    logging.StreamHandler.emit = add_coloring_to_emit_windows(logging.StreamHandler.emit)
else:
    # all non-Windows platforms are supporting ANSI escapes so we use them
    logging.StreamHandler.emit = add_coloring_to_emit_ansi(logging.StreamHandler.emit)
    #log = logging.getLogger()
    #log.addFilter(log_filter())
    #//hdlr = logging.StreamHandler()
    #//hdlr.setFormatter(formatter())

Well, I guess I might as well add my variation of the colored logger.

This is nothing fancy, but it is very simple to use and does not change the record object, thereby avoids logging the ANSI escape sequences to a log file if a file handler is used. It does not effect the log message formatting.

If you are already using the logging module's Formatter, all you have to do to get colored level names is to replace your counsel handlers Formatter with the ColoredFormatter. If you are logging an entire app you only need to do this for the top level logger.

colored_log.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

from copy import copy
from logging import Formatter

MAPPING = {
    'DEBUG'   : 37, # white
    'INFO'    : 36, # cyan
    'WARNING' : 33, # yellow
    'ERROR'   : 31, # red
    'CRITICAL': 41, # white on red bg
}

PREFIX = '\033['
SUFFIX = '\033[0m'

class ColoredFormatter(Formatter):

    def __init__(self, patern):
        Formatter.__init__(self, patern)

    def format(self, record):
        colored_record = copy(record)
        levelname = colored_record.levelname
        seq = MAPPING.get(levelname, 37) # default white
        colored_levelname = ('{0}{1}m{2}{3}') \
            .format(PREFIX, seq, levelname, SUFFIX)
        colored_record.levelname = colored_levelname
        return Formatter.format(self, colored_record)

Example usage

app.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

import logging
from colored_log import ColoredFormatter

# Create top level logger
log = logging.getLogger("main")

# Add console handler using our custom ColoredFormatter
ch = logging.StreamHandler()
ch.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
cf = ColoredFormatter("[%(name)s][%(levelname)s]  %(message)s (%(filename)s:%(lineno)d)")
ch.setFormatter(cf)
log.addHandler(ch)

# Add file handler
fh = logging.FileHandler('app.log')
fh.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
ff = logging.Formatter('%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s')
fh.setFormatter(ff)
log.addHandler(fh)

# Set log level
log.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

# Log some stuff
log.debug("app has started")
log.info("Logging to 'app.log' in the script dir")
log.warning("This is my last warning, take heed")
log.error("This is an error")
log.critical("He's dead, Jim")

# Import a sub-module 
import sub_module

sub_module.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

import logging
log = logging.getLogger('main.sub_module')

log.debug("Hello from the sub module")