A Guide to Colours in French

When it comes to learning a language, the words for different colours are some of the most important words to add to your vocabulary. They can help embellish a description, differentiate between otherwise similar objects, and help add, well, colour to your conversations. They’re incredibly important, which is why we incorporate them into the Complete French Course as early as Lesson 7. But, as with all vocabulary, the more you know, the better.

There are countless shades of colours – the Pantone website lists well over 15,000 – but some of these are far more common than others. However, the commonness of certain words changes from language to language. For instance, you’ll find that while ‘charcoal’ is a common word in English, particularly if you enjoy browsing homeware catalogues, its equivalent in French (charbon) is used less often. And the same goes the other way round.

There’s no single, simple reason why this is the case. It can be due to historical reasons, such as the availability or unavailability of certain dyes or materials in certain places (colours inspired by wine such as bordeaux are unsurprisingly common in France), or something as simple as the fact that a particular colour word sounds better in one language than in the other. Regardless, we’ve decided to prioritise the words which are more common in French – meaning that you might also learn some new English words.

One last point. Remember that when you use a colour word as an adjective, the gender needs to match the noun with which you’re associating it. (For adjectives that change gender, we’ve included both). The exception is compound colours, such as ‘vert citron’, which are invariable, and therefore do not change gender to match the noun.