A Visual History Of Crayola Crayon Colors

Crayola is synonymous with crayons. Because of them crayons are one of the top 20 most recognizable scents for adults in America, and their brand is known to 99% of households.

Inspired by every color, from the original 8 color box to the 120 color trunk?, and the crayon connection shared by generations of people, Stephen Von Worley of Weather Sealed and his friend created the Crayola Color Chart, 1903-2010, A visual history of Crayola's color expansion from 1903 to 2010.

Crayola Color Chart, 1903-2010

Making of the Chart

To create the chart, Velo gently scraped Wikipedia’s list of Crayola colors, corrected a few hues, and added the standard 16-count School Crayon box available in 1935.

Except for the dayglow-ski-jacket-inspired burst of neon magentas at the end of the ’80s, the official color set has remained remarkably faithful to its roots!

Ever industrious, Velo also calculated the average growth rate: 2.56% annually. For maximum understandability, he reformulated it as “Crayola’s Law,” which states:

The number of colors doubles every 28 years!

More Visual Fun

All 120 Crayon Names & Color Codes

To see, sort and apply any of the 120 crayon colors jump over to this classic COLOURlovers post with a list of the names, Hex and RGB of every color.

Crayola Color Census

In 2000, Crayola® held a color census where they asked Americans their favorite color—blue–and created a list of the top 50 colors along with a chronology of all the colors and their names added and discontinued to the crayon line from 1903 to the present.

Crayon Artists

Though marketed to children for the most part, crayons have made their way into fine art of the years; recently with the gorgeous work of Christian Faur and the years of work by "master crayonist" Don Marco.

Christian Faur

My earliest memories of making art involve the use of wax crayons. I can still remember the pleasure of opening a new box of crayons: the distinct smell of the wax, the beautifully colored tips, everything still perfect and unused. Using the first crayon from a new box always gave me a slight pain. Through a novel technique that I have developed, I again find myself working with the familiar form of the crayon.

Don Marco

Don Marco works with Crayola crayons and construction paper, and is one of the better known crayon artists—having sold over one million prints of his original artworks.