Glossary
208 colour words explained in plain language: theory, pigments and dyes, screens and print, craft and custom.
Presented by ClearTrust Free for designers, students and the curious.
A
- Accent colour
- A contrasting colour used in small amounts to draw attention or add life to a scheme.
- Achromatic
- Without hue: white, black and the greys between them.
- Additive mixing
- Mixing coloured lights: the more you add, the brighter the result, up to white.
- Adire
- The indigo resist-dyed cotton of the Yoruba people of south-west Nigeria.
- Afterimage
- A ghost image in the opposite colour, seen after staring at a strong colour and looking away.
- Ajrakh
- A block-printed cotton of Sindh and Kutch, patterned in indigo blue and madder red.
- Alpana
- Flowing white floor designs painted with rice paste in Bengal for festivals and rites.
- Alta
- A red liquid dye painted on the edges of the feet and palms, especially in eastern India.
- Analogous colours
- Colours that sit next to each other on the wheel, such as yellow, yellow-green and green.
- Aniline dye
- The first family of synthetic dyes, made from chemicals found in coal tar from the 1850s.
- Ao dai colours
- The customary colour choices for Vietnam's long tunic, which vary with age, place and occasion.
- Argent
- The heraldic name for silver, almost always shown as white.
- Azo dye
- The largest family of synthetic dyes and pigments, mostly yellows, oranges and reds.
- Azulejo
- A glazed, painted ceramic tile of Portugal and Spain, often blue and white.
- Azure
- The heraldic name for blue; in general use, the clear blue of a cloudless sky.
B
- Bandhani
- The tie-dye of Gujarat and Rajasthan, made of thousands of tiny bound dots.
- Banding
- Visible steps or stripes in what should be a smooth change of colour.
- Batik
- Cloth patterned by drawing or stamping with hot wax, dyeing, then removing the wax.
- Binder
- The glue in paint that holds the pigment particles together and sticks them to the surface.
- Bindi
- A dot or small ornament worn on the forehead between the eyebrows, mainly by women in South Asia.
- Bit depth
- The number of steps available for each colour channel; more bits mean smoother gradations.
- Block printing
- Printing a pattern on cloth or paper by hand with carved wooden blocks.
- Bogolan
- A cotton cloth from Mali, patterned in dark brown and white using fermented mud.
- Bole
- A fine, soft clay, usually red, laid under gold leaf to give it warmth and a surface for polishing.
- Brand colour
- A colour used consistently by a company or organisation so that people recognise it at a glance.
C
- Calibration
- Adjusting and measuring a screen or printer so that it shows colours accurately and consistently.
- Chroma
- How strong and pure a colour looks compared with a grey of the same lightness.
- CIE XYZ
- The 1931 standard that first described all visible colours in numbers; the basis of later colour spaces.
- CMYK
- The four inks of colour printing: cyan, magenta, yellow and black.
- Cochineal
- A crimson dye made from a small insect that lives on prickly pear cactus in the Americas.
- Colour blindness
- A reduced ability to tell certain colours apart, most often reds from greens.
- Colour blocking
- Placing large, flat areas of strong, contrasting colour side by side.
- Colour coding
- Using colours as signals to sort, label or warn, as in traffic lights, wires and maps.
- Colour constancy
- The brain's knack of seeing an object as the same colour under very different lighting.
- Colour forecasting
- The business of predicting which colours will be popular in fashion and products in coming seasons.
- Colour harmony
- The idea that certain combinations of colours look pleasing or balanced together.
- Colour profile
- A small data file that tells software how a device or image file represents colour.
- Colour separation
- Splitting a full-colour image into one single-colour image for each printing ink.
- Colour space
- A defined way of describing colours as sets of numbers, with stated limits and a reference white.
- Colour story
- A group of colours chosen to carry one mood or theme through a collection, product range or room.
- Colour temperature
- A way of describing whether white light is yellowish or bluish, given in kelvin.
- Colour wheel
- Hues arranged in a circle so that related colours sit side by side and opposites face each other.
- Colourway
- One of several colour versions in which the same pattern or product is made.
- Complementary colours
- Two colours opposite each other on the colour wheel, such as blue and orange.
- Cone cell
- A light-sensing cell in the retina that gives colour vision in good light.
- Contrast ratio
- A number that compares the lightness of two colours, used to check that text is readable.
- Cor
- The Portuguese word for colour.
- Couleur
- The French word for colour, and the source of the English word.
D
- Dancheong
- The multicoloured painted decoration on the wooden beams and eaves of Korean palaces and temples.
- Dark mode
- A display setting that shows light text on a dark background instead of dark on light.
- Delta E
- A single number for how different two colours look; around 1 is roughly the smallest visible difference.
- Dispersion
- The spreading of white light into its colours when it passes through glass, water or crystal.
- Display P3
- A wider colour space than sRGB, used by many recent phones, tablets and computer screens.
- Dithering
- Mixing dots of the available colours to give the impression of colours that are not available.
- Duotone
- An image printed or displayed in two colours, usually one dark and one light or bright.
- Dye
- A coloured substance that dissolves and bonds with fibres, used to colour cloth, leather and paper.
E
- Earth pigment
- A pigment dug from the ground: clay or rock coloured by iron and other minerals.
- Earth tone
- A warm, muted colour like those of soil, clay, sand, stone and dry plants.
- Encaustic
- Painting with pigment mixed into melted beeswax, applied hot.
F
- Farbe
- The German word for colour, which also means paint and dye.
- Five-elements colours (wuxing)
- The Chinese scheme linking five colours with five elements, directions and seasons.
- Fluorescence
- The glow of a material that absorbs light of one colour, often ultraviolet, and gives out another.
- Fresco
- Wall painting done on fresh, wet lime plaster, so the colour becomes part of the wall.
- Fugitive
- Describes a colour that fades or changes quickly, especially in light.
G
- Gamma
- The curve that relates the numbers stored in an image to the amount of light shown on screen.
- Gamut
- The full range of colours that a device, ink set or system can produce.
- Gesso
- A white coating of chalk or gypsum and glue, used to prepare a surface for painting or gilding.
- Gilding
- Covering a surface with a very thin layer of gold or a gold-coloured metal.
- Glaze
- A thin, transparent layer of paint laid over dry paint to deepen or shift its colour.
- Gouache
- An opaque, matt water-based paint, like watercolour with more pigment and added white.
- Gradient
- A smooth, gradual change from one colour to another across an area.
- Greige
- A neutral between grey and beige; also raw cloth that has not yet been bleached or dyed.
- Ground
- The prepared surface layer on which a painting, print or dyed pattern is made.
- Gulal
- The coloured powder thrown and smeared during the Hindu festival of Holi.
- Gules
- The heraldic name for red.
H
- Haldi
- Turmeric, the yellow root used across South Asia as a spice, a dye and a sacred substance.
- Halftone
- A printing method that shows shades of a colour using dots of different sizes.
- HDR
- Picture technology that shows a wider range from dark to bright than standard screens.
- Henna
- A shrub whose dried, powdered leaves stain skin, hair and nails orange to red-brown.
- Heraldic tincture
- One of the limited set of colours, metals and furs used on coats of arms.
- Hex code
- A six-character code, such as #FF9933, that gives a colour's red, green and blue values for the web.
- High-visibility colour
- A very bright fluorescent colour, usually yellow-green or orange, worn to be seen easily.
- Holi
- The Hindu spring festival at which people throw coloured powder and water on one another.
- HSL
- A way of writing a screen colour as hue, saturation and lightness instead of red, green and blue.
- HSV
- A close relative of HSL, used in many colour pickers, with value or brightness as the third number.
- Hue
- The quality that makes a colour red, yellow, green or blue: its position around the colour wheel.
I
- ICC
- The industry body that defines the standard format for colour profiles.
- Ikat
- Cloth whose pattern is dyed into the threads before weaving, giving designs with a blurred edge.
- Indigo
- A deep blue dye from the leaves of the indigo plant, and the colour it gives.
- Iridescence
- Colour that shifts as the viewing angle changes, as on a soap bubble or a peacock feather.
- Iro
- The Japanese word for colour.
J
- Jewel tone
- A deep, rich, saturated colour named after a gemstone, such as emerald or ruby.
K
- Kalamkari
- Hand-painted or block-printed cotton from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, coloured with natural dyes.
- Kasane no irome
- The Japanese court art of layering robes in named colour combinations suited to each season.
- Kelvin
- The unit of temperature used to describe the colour of white light.
- Kente colours
- The colours of kente, the strip-woven ceremonial cloth of Ghana, each with a commonly given meaning.
- Key (K)
- The black ink in four-colour printing, the K of CMYK.
- Key colour
- The main colour of a scheme, from which the others are chosen or generated.
- Kohl
- A dark cosmetic applied around the eyes, used across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.
- Kolam
- A pattern of lines and loops drawn daily with white rice flour at Tamil doorsteps.
- Kumkum
- A red powder used in Hindu worship and for marks on the forehead.
L
- Lab
- A colour space designed around human vision, with one lightness axis and two colour axes.
- Lac
- A resin made by a tiny insect of South and South-East Asia, source of a red dye and of shellac.
- Lacquer
- A hard, glossy coating; in East Asia, the sap of the lacquer tree, usually coloured black or red.
- Lake pigment
- A pigment made by fixing a dye onto a colourless powder, so it can be used in paint.
- Lawn
- The Arabic word for colour; its plural is alwan.
- Lightfast
- Describes a colour that resists fading when exposed to light.
- Lightness
- The measured or perceived amount of light in a colour, the L in HSL and Lab.
- Limewash
- A cheap, breathable wall paint made from lime and water, white unless tinted with pigment.
- Liturgical colours
- The colours of robes and hangings used in Christian worship, changed with the seasons and feasts.
- Livery
- The fixed colours and markings that identify a household, company, team or fleet of vehicles.
M
- Madder
- A plant whose roots give a lasting red dye, used from India to Europe for thousands of years.
- Mehndi
- The art of decorating hands and feet with henna paste, especially for weddings and festivals.
- Metamerism
- When two colours match under one light and look different under another.
- Monochrome
- Using one colour only, in different lights, darks and strengths; often also means black and white.
- Mordant
- A substance, often a metal salt, that helps a dye grip the fibre and can change its colour.
- Mourning dress
- Clothing worn to show grief after a death; its colour differs widely between cultures.
- Munsell system
- A system that orders colours by hue, value and chroma, in steps that look even to the eye.
- Muted
- Describes a colour that has been softened or dulled, so it is less vivid.
N
- National colours
- Colours that stand for a country, often but not always taken from its flag.
- Natural dye
- A dye obtained from plants, insects, shellfish or minerals, not made in a chemical factory.
- NCS
- A Swedish colour system that describes each colour by how it looks, in terms of six basic colours.
- Neon
- An extremely bright, glowing colour; originally the light of gas-filled glass tube signs.
- Neutral
- A colour with little or no hue, such as white, grey, black, beige or taupe.
- Niram
- The everyday word for colour in Tamil and Malayalam.
O
- Obangsaek
- The five traditional Korean colours, blue, red, yellow, white and black, tied to the five directions.
- Ochre
- A natural earth pigment coloured by iron oxide, ranging from yellow through orange to red.
- Oil paint
- Paint bound with a drying oil, usually linseed, which hardens slowly into a tough film.
- OKLCH
- A newer way of writing colours for the web as lightness, chroma and hue, tuned to look even.
- Opacity
- How well a paint or ink hides what is underneath it.
- Opalescence
- A milky, bluish glow in a translucent material that looks warmer when light shines through it.
- Or
- The heraldic name for gold, often shown as yellow.
- Overprint
- Printing one ink directly on top of another, so the two combine, instead of leaving a gap for it.
P
- Palette
- A chosen set of colours used together in a design, a painting, a brand or a place.
- Pantone
- A commercial system of numbered colours used worldwide to specify exact inks and dyes.
- Pastel
- A pale, soft colour with a lot of white in it, such as baby pink or mint green.
- Patina
- A surface layer and colour that forms on metal, wood or stone with age and exposure.
- Phosphorescence
- A slow glow that continues after the light source is taken away.
- Pigment
- A fine coloured powder that does not dissolve, mixed into a liquid to make paint or ink.
- Prayer flag
- A Tibetan Buddhist cloth flag, hung in sets of five colours in a fixed order.
- Primary colour
- One of a small set of colours from which a wide range of others can be mixed.
- Process colour
- Colour printed by combining dots of the four standard inks, cyan, magenta, yellow and black.
- Purpure
- The heraldic name for purple, a rare tincture.
R
- RAL
- A European standard list of numbered colours for paint, coatings and plastics.
- Rang
- The word for colour in Hindi, Urdu, Persian, Punjabi, Bengali and many related languages.
- Rangi
- The Swahili word for colour and for paint.
- Rangoli
- Patterns made on the floor or ground with coloured powders, rice, sand or flowers in India.
- Rayleigh scattering
- The scattering of light by air molecules, strongest for blue light, which makes the sky blue.
- Registration
- The exact lining-up of each colour layer in printing, so that the image is sharp.
- Renk
- The Turkish word for colour.
- Resist dyeing
- Any method of making patterns by blocking dye from parts of the cloth or yarn.
- RGB
- A way of making and describing colour by mixing red, green and blue light.
- Rich black
- A deeper printed black made by adding other inks beneath the black ink.
- Rod cell
- A light-sensing cell in the retina that works in dim light and does not detect colour.
- Royal purple
- Purple as the colour of kings and emperors, a link that comes from the cost of ancient purple dye.
S
- Sable
- The heraldic name for black.
- Saek
- The Korean word for colour.
- Saffron robe
- The orange, yellow or ochre robe of Buddhist monks and Hindu ascetics.
- Saturation
- How vivid a colour is, from full strength down to grey.
- Secondary colour
- A colour made by mixing two primary colours in roughly equal parts.
- Sgraffito
- Decoration made by scratching through a top layer to reveal a different colour beneath.
- Shade
- Strictly, a colour made darker by adding black; loosely, any variety of a colour.
- Shibori
- A family of Japanese resist-dye methods using binding, stitching, folding, clamping and twisting.
- Sienna
- An earth pigment named after Siena in Italy: yellow-brown when raw, red-brown when roasted.
- Simultaneous contrast
- The way a colour seems to change depending on the colours placed next to it.
- Sindoor
- A red or orange-red powder worn by many married Hindu women along the parting of the hair.
- Spectrum
- The band of colours, red through violet, into which white light can be spread.
- Split complementary
- A scheme of one colour plus the two colours either side of its opposite on the wheel.
- Spot colour
- A single ink mixed in advance to an exact colour, printed solid instead of built from dots.
- sRGB
- The standard colour space of the web and most screens, defined in the 1990s.
- Structural colour
- Colour produced by microscopic structure that bends and reflects light, not by pigment.
- Subtractive mixing
- Mixing paints, inks or dyes: each one absorbs some light, so mixtures grow darker.
- Sumptuary law
- A law that limits what people may wear or own according to rank, including which colours.
- Swatch
- A small sample of a colour, on cloth, paper, paint card or screen.
T
- Tartan sett
- The repeating pattern of coloured stripes that defines a particular tartan.
- Tempera
- Paint made by mixing pigment with egg yolk and water; it dries fast to a matt, lasting film.
- Tertiary colour
- A colour between a primary and a secondary on the wheel, such as blue-green or red-orange.
- Tetrachromacy
- Colour vision based on four kinds of cone cell instead of the usual human three.
- Thai colours of the day
- The Thai custom that gives each day of the week its own lucky colour.
- Tie-dye
- Patterning cloth by tying, knotting or folding it tightly before dyeing.
- Tilaka
- A mark made on the forehead in Hindu practice, whose shape and colour can show a tradition.
- Tint
- A colour made lighter by adding white.
- Tone
- A colour softened by adding grey, or more loosely the lightness of a colour.
- Tone on tone
- Combining lighter and darker versions of the same colour, or a pattern in two close shades.
- Triad
- Three colours spaced evenly around the colour wheel, such as red, yellow and blue.
- Tsvet
- The Russian word for colour.
- Tyrian purple
- A costly ancient purple dye made from sea snails on the eastern Mediterranean coast.
U
- Ultramarine
- A deep, slightly violet blue, once ground from the stone lapis lazuli and now made synthetically.
- Ultraviolet
- Light with a wavelength just shorter than violet, invisible to humans but seen by many animals.
- Umber
- A dark brown earth pigment containing iron and manganese; cooler raw, warmer when roasted.
- Undertone
- The slight lean of a colour towards another hue, seen best when it is thinned or compared.
V
- Value
- How light or dark a colour is, on a scale from black to white.
- Varna
- A Sanskrit word for colour, also meaning outward appearance, a class of society and a letter or sound.
- Varnish
- A clear protective coating that also deepens colours and evens out the surface shine.
- Vat dye
- A dye that must be chemically changed to dissolve, then turns back to its colour in the air.
- Vehicle
- The liquid part of a paint that carries the pigment: the binder plus any thinner.
- Verdigris
- A blue-green substance that forms on copper, once made deliberately as a green pigment.
- Vermilion
- A brilliant orange-red pigment made from mercury sulphide, natural or manufactured.
- Vert
- The heraldic name for green.
- Vexillology
- The study of flags: their history, design, colours and meaning.
W
- Warm and cool colours
- The habit of calling reds, oranges and yellows warm, and blues and greens cool.
- Watercolour
- Transparent paint bound with gum, thinned with water and used on paper.
- Wavelength
- The distance between one wave crest of light and the next, which largely decides the colour we see.
- WCAG
- The international guidelines for making websites usable by people with disabilities, including colour rules.
- White point
- The exact colour that a screen, camera or standard treats as white.
- Woad
- A European plant whose leaves give a blue dye, the same colouring matter as indigo.
Y
- Yanse
- The usual Mandarin Chinese word for colour.
Z
- Zari
- Thread of gold or silver, or a look-alike, woven or embroidered into rich textiles.