colored output even if stdout is not connected to a terminal

Currently output is only colored if stdout is connected to a terminal.
But sometimes one wants also colored output if this is not the case.
e. g. when redirecting the output to "less -R".
Currently I see no way to achieve this like "-color=always" vs. "-color=auto" in tools like "grep" or "ls". I only see a parameter to disable color. Maybe --no-color could be deprecated in favor of a --color[=WHEN] option where WHEN can be never, auto, always with whatever defaults. In the GNU tools, default is no color and --color is equal to --color=auto which is the current default behaviour of gradle.