32+ Common Color Names for Easy Reference
Are you tired of the other kids at Summer Color Camp laughing at you because you thought chartreuse was a shade of pink? Still having nightmares about the time you called a Salmon colored dress Mauve? With our help you'll never call Azure, Aquamarine again and will be name dropping colors like they're hot potatoes.
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Our guide isn't an exact science, depending on our monitor color calibration, brightness and even how good our eyes are... we all see a slightly different color. So, we took the color names that are used most often and best guessed the appropriate colors based on web standards and common usage.
Ivory
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Beige
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Wheat
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Tan
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Khaki
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Silver
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Gray
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Charcoal
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Navy Blue
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Royal Blue
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Medium Blue
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Azure
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Cyan
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Aquamarine
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Teal
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Forest Green
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Olive
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Chartreuse
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Lime
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Golden
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Goldenrod
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Coral
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Salmon
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Hot Pink
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Fuchsia
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Puce
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Mauve
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Lavender
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Plum
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Indigo
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Maroon
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Crimson
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Do You Agree or Disagree?
The above colors are based on common use in web standards... Do you think our Salmon is a bit too Peach? Maybe our Forest Green is a bit too Grass? Show us your suggestions for commonly used color names.
Have you been inspired to add some color to your project? Creative Market has some great templates, fonts, and patterns to spruce things up.
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38 Comments
Showing 1 - 30 of 38 Comments
Team
P.S. For those who are now ready to be "name dropping colors like they’re hot potatoes" and were wondering what a Hot Potato's colors would look like:
the puce above seems more the colour of the mauve i chose. here's my version of puce. its supposed to be the colour of a flea...
from wikipedia, "The colour puce is usually defined with adjectives such as "dark", "deep", "intense" and even "brilliant".
from wikipedia, "The colour puce is usually defined with adjectives such as "dark", "deep", "intense" and even "brilliant".
What do you mean, "common"? Is this the kind of website where you should be asking that? After all, we've got about 100 colors in here named for "slime".
Team
From the Digg comments "I was reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows this evening and came across the color "heliotrope". It wasn't on this list, but Wikipedia had it, of course. They also noted the "heliotrope" reference in the book."
Well, I like magenta and it isn't in the list above so am adding it!
Team
Also... as noticed the Cyan listed above is the Web Standard... True Cyan is:
puce ftw
I think you got some details wrong: Golden - this looks more like a peach actually. Gold is far less saturated. Hot Pink has too much blue, pink should always have MORE red than blue in it. And you misspelled Fuchsia.
Great post! Recently was turned on to the site and love it.
Team
@restof & others: The colors chosen for this post were ones that have commonly associated HEX values attached to them... I totally agree that the colors connected to the names don't always match up, but what we wanted to do was build a little conversation about the common names of colors and to have a little fun seeing what others thought...
I honestly think a Crimson Red is a bit less pink, sort of like:
I honestly think a Crimson Red is a bit less pink, sort of like:
The Cyan is way too bright for print. Also, your CMYK values for Charcoal are the same as Silver. You might want to check those.
I think Chartreuse is more like:
Team
@manekineko: Well, yes... that is where we got a lot of the "standard" HEX values for the post from... but as you can see, not everyone agrees ;)
hehe ok fair enough :)
There is a set of "standard" web color names. HOWEVER, many gripe that they are very arbitrary in range and distribution. They get around that by allowing you to define any RGB hex as a color. Yes, very bright yellow and things like that are out of the RGB gamut which is triangle shaped. Too bad. We've got what we've got for the moment.
could it be that we all disagree partly because of our different monitors? i just had to replace mine and the new one is like night and day in difference from the old one. my colours are now soooooo much prettier, and i thought they were okay before.
i agree about the crimson, darius. i think crimson is a deeper colour. the one you chose is a good one.
i have heliotrope in my yard and keith's colour is very close, but mine are a bit darker.
i still think chartreuse should be yellower.
i like your magenta, liddle_r, but i think to be called magenta it should be pinker. something like this:
great discussion, by the way.
and what does ftw mean? tr67 wrote "puce ftw"
Team
i agree about the crimson, darius. i think crimson is a deeper colour. the one you chose is a good one.
i have heliotrope in my yard and keith's colour is very close, but mine are a bit darker.
i still think chartreuse should be yellower.
i like your magenta, liddle_r, but i think to be called magenta it should be pinker. something like this:
great discussion, by the way.
and what does ftw mean? tr67 wrote "puce ftw"
thanks. i thought it was just wtf backwards...
I agree with Darius about the Crimson. And the Chartreuse that shellab made looks more right to me than the one at the top.
But, I am sticking with my magenta! To me magneto looks too pink. So, it must just be a definition of what we think magenta is. I am sure my definition is coming from the crayola crayon box! Probably the root of all my color sense comes from there!
Very interesting for sure!
For me, the following is more of a forest green:
The one above seem more like a kelly green (albeit a dark kelly green).
But, I am sticking with my magenta! To me magneto looks too pink. So, it must just be a definition of what we think magenta is. I am sure my definition is coming from the crayola crayon box! Probably the root of all my color sense comes from there!
Very interesting for sure!
For me, the following is more of a forest green:
The one above seem more like a kelly green (albeit a dark kelly green).
And just what color is ochre... I named a color that today but I don't think I was right.
@liddle_r --
Ochre is sort of an orange-yellow, or, as restof has it, the colour of yams:
Ochre is sort of an orange-yellow, or, as restof has it, the colour of yams:
I've always thought puce to be a brownish purple. I know thereare other discriptions of this color but I like the deep dark purple/brown. I've made a few l palettes for puce. Here are a couple:
Navy Blue and Charcoal aren't dark enough, and Crimson is too pink. IMHO. :)
I'm pretty sure this is referring to the names of colors you can put into html, without needing to use hex code. This is me saying that the font color is "forestgreen" Most amusing I think though are the names that are off the beaten track, like This is the color of "demon", while this is "fire" Of course, the names can display differently on different browsers, which is why it's better to use hex.
liddle_r, my magenta (magneto is what my students call it) comes from the tempera paint we use in school, but also the process ink i used as a printer. that magenta may be a bit darker, but not as dark as yours. of course it could all be our monitors. i'm on a different computer now and it all looks very different.
i always thought mauve and Fuchsia had more red tones in them than blue tones
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