How do I improve my color vocabulary?

March 21, 2025 11:03 AM

John McPhee describes the effect of blending saffron into a mixture as changing its color from “flax to jonquil to canary to high lemon chrome”. How can I acquire a color vocabulary like that?
posted by Lemkin to Education (19 answers total)

The Jasper Fforde novel called Shades of Grey and the sequel Red Side Story are about a society where the number of colors you can perceive determines your class. Many people can only see one primary color and so there are arranged marriages of a blue and red person, for example, to try to improve the offsprings' abilities. Almost everyone has a last name that is a shade of color. There is a town in the story called High Saffron.
posted by soelo at 11:13 AM on March 21 [10 favorites]

Colour Name Finder is something you might enjoy - mouse over their sample photo - or your own - and it tells you the colour name at each step.

You might also like this article about strange paint colour names and why they exist.
posted by rongorongo at 11:34 AM on March 21 [7 favorites]

Get a reprint of Werner's Nomenclature of Colours, such as the updated and expanded Nature's Palette: A Color Reference System from the Natural World.
posted by jedicus at 11:35 AM on March 21 [4 favorites]

I don’t know if it’s going to get you to jonquil & high lemon chrome, but you could play a board game like Hues and Cues that gets you to practice your color communication under a bit of pressure.
posted by bcwinters at 11:54 AM on March 21 [6 favorites]

Find a good library and check out W.T. Stearns Botanical Latin? This describes the efforts to standardize the names of colours, so that Hungarian botanists can be on the same page as their Honduran colleagues.
Blues : Cyanus Prussian, cornflower; indigoticus indigo; azureus sky-blue; caesius eye-blue, lavender's hint of grey; caeruleus regular blue; violaceus blue stained with red; lilacinus is a paler violet; lazulinus ultramarine; cobaltinus .
Whites: Candida albicans is an off-white pure-white fungus, for example. Neither is as snow-white as nivalis; milk white lacteus otoh has a touch of blue; while chalk-white cretaceus has a hint of grey and is definitely matt; argenteus is a silvery white with a lustre; cremeus or eborinus are creamy because there is an undertone of yellow.
etc.
Wonderful question, ace responses.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:04 PM on March 21 [4 favorites]

Werner's Nomenclature of Colours

I suspect McPhee, consumate researcher that he is, is indeed using reference names to indicate specific colors, but flax to jonquil to canary to high lemon chrome comes from something later than Werner- lemon chrome shows up in Ridgway and Maerz and Paul, but not Werner.

A short assortment of links on the subject of color classification and representation:
Federal Standard 595
AMS STANDARD 595 COLOR
Zur Farbenlehre
The Bird-Based Color System that Eventually Became Pantone
Using Color
British Color Council
Natural Color System
The Dimensions of Colour
Forbes Pigment Collection
“Tomato” versus “#FF6347”—the tragicomic history of CSS color names
Cap Matches Color - Color Charts
Colors of Signal Lights - Their Selection, Definition, Measurement. Production, and Use
How to Paint Anything the Color of the Golden Gate Bridge
Circular of the Bureau of Standards no. 553: the ISCC-NBS method of designating colors and a dictionary of color names
posted by zamboni at 12:04 PM on March 21 [9 favorites]

Good options for learning color systems and formal stuff above!!

Notice though that the words he uses are not fanciful or poetic but actual things. Flax has a color, lemons have a color, and somewhere in between them are canary (matte lemon) and jonquil (less vibrant still). If you were to arrange those items, you would see the order of hues, and it has little to do with specialized vocabulary and more to do with simply acknowledging the variety around us.

So how can you improve? Honestly, I would start arranging things by color in your life and mind! Seriously. I do it all the time because I'm neurotic. Arrange your book covers, your blankets, your shirts. Touch the leaves of the plant in ascending greenness. Arrange your strawberries from least to most red. Is one "arterial" and the other "cough drop"? Is the cough drop strawberry colored? And so on. If you start using fine color gradations in your everyday life, I suspect you will find yourself thinking in color as well. And your brain will suggest "lemon" instead of "big strong yellow" or "seafoam" instead of "very light green."
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:10 PM on March 21 [10 favorites]

Teaching yourself to observe color in more precise detail might help you with this overall project, so I'd suggest checking out Light and color in the outdoors by M.G. Minnaert. It's a book about observing and understanding visual phenomena in the natural world: rainbows, shadows, the color of the sky at different times of day and under different conditions, reflections, polarized light, mirages, a zillion things. It's specific and technical but written for a general audience.
posted by dreamyshade at 3:25 PM on March 21 [1 favorite]

You might enjoy the book The Secret Lives of Color, which is both a diverting and an informative read.
posted by eponym at 3:34 PM on March 21 [1 favorite]

As a blind person this is an incredibly weird thread for me but I appreciate it a great deal.
posted by Alensin at 4:06 PM on March 21 [18 favorites]

You might also take an introductory painting (in whatever medium) or color theory course, if that's an option.
I don't know the fancy names of colors, but I had a Color course in Architecture school, and I learned to see the basic colors that you would have to mix to get a particular color and it really changed my perception.
posted by signal at 4:30 PM on March 21 [3 favorites]

British Color Council
My Dear Fellow, you could not possibly make a more egregious typo in referring to our good selves.
And on the subject:
1. Aubergine (UK) → Eggplant (US).
2. Claret (UK) → Burgundy (US).
3. Duck-egg blue (UK) → Robin’s egg blue (US).
4. Eau de Nil (UK) → Mint Green (US).
5. Puce (UK) → Mauve/Taupe (US) – In the UK, “puce” is sometimes used for a dusty pink, but in the US, Taupe (French for “mole”) is more associated with brownish-purple shades.
6. Oxford Blue (UK) → Navy Blue (US).
7. Postbox Red (UK) → Fire Engine Red (US).
8. Stone (UK) → Beige/Tan (US).
posted by rongorongo at 4:55 AM on March 22 [3 favorites]

My Dear Fellow, you could not possibly make a more egregious typo in referring to our good selves.

Autocorrect regrets the error. Or not, since it is an unfeeling automaton.
posted by zamboni at 5:55 AM on March 22

Get really into reading blogs about makeup, interior design, and/or fashion.
posted by matildaben at 6:01 AM on March 22 [2 favorites]

There's a song in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor TM Dreamcoat that includes all the colors. Video here!
posted by low_horrible_immoral at 8:13 AM on March 22

Puce is a brownish purple, the color of a flea, colored by the blood it eats, nothing at like taupe, which is the dull grayish-brown color of a mole, with no reddishness to it at all.
posted by metonym at 3:15 PM on March 22

I was at a table quiz last month and one of the Qs was "What word is the name of a Tree, a Fruit and a Colour?"
Orange was the correct answer until there was a riot among the punters insisting that credit be given for . . . Cherry, Apricot, Lemon, Lime, Olive, Plum, Avocado, Peach, Callopap
posted by BobTheScientist at 4:22 PM on March 22

Colo(u)r scientists may disagree with reason, but my advice is two-part:

1. Pick a color. What does this color remind you of? In a Proustian sense, where does your personal experience of the color take you? Please be specific.

2. Just say that out-loud. There is no wrong or right. Your perception of color is literally inside your own head. Say what you think.

Sometimes people will disagree. That’s great. Other people have their own eyeballs, which live in their own heads, with their own associations and reference points. Other-times people will agree. They will know exactly what you mean when you say “this green is the green of a 90’s school bus interior—and also the green my grandfather once painted his garage, that time he bought returned paint.”

It doesn’t matter if people know your reference or not. The reference is the part that matters. And sharing it. Sharing it matters a lot too. In either case, you build your own vocabulary with your audience.

If you feel short on worlds, follow zamboni’s links. They’re full of great color vocabulary, which you’re already more qualified to deploy than you know.
posted by Hoenikker at 6:19 PM on March 22

As others have already said, start with your perception. My local movie theater uses a digital image of a golden curtain in their pre-movie roll, and I find it fascinating to observe how using everything from white through yellows to dark brown works together to create the image of a shimmering golden.
posted by achrise at 9:59 AM on March 23