change active color of nav-pills

This is the code i'm using to make the pills in my navbar active..

  <ul class="nav nav-pills">

  <li class="<%= 'active' if current_page?(root_path) %>"><% yield (:home)%><%= link_to "Home", root_path%></li>

however it uses the default blue color as "active" how should i change this?

this is what i have in my css already

.nav>li>a:hover,

.nav>li>a:focus{

 background-color: #5c8a36;}

even with this (the color should be green) it still shows up as the default blue color