How to say the colours in French

When you start to learn a new language, you need to get the basics right - introductions, numbers, apologies, and colours. This is the vocabulary you will learn very quickly. Why? Because it is useful in everyday life to describe people, objects, places... But beware of this apparently very simple topic, it can have its share of complexity at any level! Now, let yourself be taken on a colourful journey!

Colour vocabulary is rarely found in French textbooks for adults, but it is essential:

Colours in French

Now you know the basics about colours in French, you can add some nuances by adding another adjective:

But be careful where you place it in the sentence! The light/dark shade must be added after the colour:

Physical description using colours in French

When you want to describe eyes, the colours remain simple:

As for describing hair colour, the vocabulary is rather different and quite rich in nuances. If you are a man you should use the phrase marked (m) and if you are a woman (f).

Sometimes there are differences in the perception of colours from one language to another: for both French and English speakers a red panda is red.

But this is not the case with sugar for example:

Agreement of adjectives in French

Here is a chapter that will be useful even to French speakers. In French, colour adjectives agree with the noun to which they refer. If I'm talking about the colour of a book ("livre" is masculine, we say "UN livre") then the adjective is masculine.

If I'm talking about the colour of a car ("voiture" is feminine, we say “UNE voiture") then the adjective is feminine.

If I am talking about several masculine objects, the nouns and adjectives will be in the masculine plural, and if I am talking about several feminine objects, the nouns and adjectives will be in the feminine plural.

If I describe female objects, but there is one male object (just one), all the nouns and adjectives will be masculine plural.

Enough talk, let's summarise in a table:

Weird... Why don't "orange" and " marron" take the feminine or plural forms? Some explain it by the fact that they are adjectives of colour but also nouns of fruit, and that they should therefore be treated differently.

But the weirdness doesn't stop there! Let's go back to our story about colour shades. The example above was:

Do you notice what's wrong now? Normally, if all this made sense, we would write :

Because we have two eyes, it's plural, so the colour adjectives should be plural too. But no! The French Academy decided otherwise and decreed that compound colour adjectives do not agree.

Even the spellcheckers don't agree with this spelling and point it out as an error!

Expressions with colours in French

The French are very good at expressing their emotions, and sometimes they use colourful expressions too:

Jaune	Rire jaune	= forcing yourself to laugh
Rouge	Être rouge comme une tomate rouge	= be red-faced out of shyness
Rose	Voir la vie en rose	= to be happy, optimistic
Bleu	Avoir une peur bleue	= to be afraid
Bleu	Avoir un bleu	= to have a hematoma, a bruise
Bleu	Être fleur bleue	= to be romantic
Bleu	Un cordon bleu	= to be a good cook
Vert	Être vert de rage	= to be very angry
Vert	Avoir la main verte	= to be a good gardener
Noir	Broyer du noir	= to be sad, depressed
Blanc	Être blanc comme linge	= to be very pale
Blanc	Montrer patte blanche	= to show that we are innocent
Blanc	Une nuit blanche	= a sleepless night

Colours in French songs

Finally, there is another French expression that says that " La musique adoucit les mœurs ". To end on a soft note, here are some French songs with a colour in the title:

Want to sing? Or dance? But isn't it also time to book your next class with Lingoda?

Audrey Sivadier

Audrey has been a French teacher for more than ten years now, and a cheese-lover all her life. She comes from the west of France, and after living 2 years in Spain and 4 years in Oxford in England, she has just settled in the heart of France, in Auvergne, a land of cheese, rugby, Michelin tires and ancient volcanoes. Audrey definitely prefers the first one. She speaks French, Spanish and English, and just started German, nothing better to understand her students who tremble at the French grammar! When she is not teaching, she tries to find time to cook or sing in a choir. She loves to invite people to her house to feed them and trap them with musical blind tests designed and adapted to her guests! Find out more about her on her website and LinkedIn.