Colour

Colour (British English and Commonwealth English) or color (American English) is a property of light.

Pigment Colours - Classification (Used in fine arts and drawings and mainly used for physical works)

Additive colour mixing {Used in computer screening and graphics and mostly used for digital purposes}

Subtractive colour mixing {Used in computer screening and graphics and mostly used for digital purposes}

The following are the most common colour names:

• Red
• Orange
• Yellow
• Green
• Cyan
• Blue
• Magenta
• Purple
• Lavender
• Lilac
• White
• Black
• Grey
• Silver
• Pink
• Maroon
• Brown
• Beige
• Tan
• Peach
• Lime
• Olive
• Turquoise
• Teal
• Navy blue
• Indigo
• Violet

Primary colours can be mixed to make other colours. Red, yellow, and blue are the three traditional primary colours. The primary colours for television screens and computer monitors are red, green and blue. Printers and paints use magenta, yellow, and cyan as their primary colours; they may also use black. Sometimes this set of colours is simply called red, yellow, and blue.

People who can not see colours or have a distorted sense of colour are called colour-blind. Most colour-blind people are male.

Colours are sometimes added to food. Food colouring is used to colour food, but some foods have natural colourings, like beta carotene.

When something has no colour, it is called transparent. An example is air.

The science of colour is sometimes called chromatics, colourimetry, or simply colour science.

A translucent material is not the same as a colourless material because it can still have a colour, such as stained glass.

Related pages

• Colour vision
• List of colors