diff --git a/clang-tools-extra/clang-tidy/tool/run-clang-tidy.py b/clang-tools-extra/clang-tidy/tool/run-clang-tidy.py
--- a/clang-tools-extra/clang-tidy/tool/run-clang-tidy.py
+++ b/clang-tools-extra/clang-tidy/tool/run-clang-tidy.py
@@ -80,10 +80,14 @@
 
 
 def get_tidy_invocation(f, clang_tidy_binary, checks, tmpdir, build_path,
-                        header_filter, allow_enabling_alpha_checkers,
-                        extra_arg, extra_arg_before, quiet, config):
+                        header_filter, use_color,
+                        allow_enabling_alpha_checkers, extra_arg,
+                        extra_arg_before, quiet, config):
   """Gets a command line for clang-tidy."""
-  start = [clang_tidy_binary, '--use-color']
+  start = [clang_tidy_binary]
+  # Only if we are connected to a tty we can check for enabling color mode
+  if os.isatty(sys.stdout.fileno()) and use_color:
+    start.append('--use-color')
   if allow_enabling_alpha_checkers:
     start.append('-allow-enabling-analyzer-alpha-checkers')
   if header_filter is not None:
@@ -163,6 +167,7 @@
     name = queue.get()
     invocation = get_tidy_invocation(name, args.clang_tidy_binary, args.checks,
                                      tmpdir, build_path, args.header_filter,
+                                     args.use_color,
                                      args.allow_enabling_alpha_checkers,
                                      args.extra_arg, args.extra_arg_before,
                                      args.quiet, args.config)
@@ -204,6 +209,8 @@
                       'When the value is empty, clang-tidy will '
                       'attempt to find a file named .clang-tidy for '
                       'each source file in its parent directories.')
+  parser.add_argument('-use-color', action='store_true',
+                      help='Enables diagnostic message colors.')
   parser.add_argument('-header-filter', default=None,
                       help='regular expression matching the names of the '
                       'headers to output diagnostics from. Diagnostics from '