You can describe a colour as light or dark – for example, someone can have light brown or dark brown hair. If a colour is very intense, you can describe it as bright – for example, a bright red apple. If the colour is not very intense, you can describe it as pale – for example, a pale green dress. When describing colours in general, you can talk about bold/vivid colours – which are very intense – or pastel colors, which are light or pale.
We can use other words to describe specific shades of a colour (variations of a specific colour). These words are usually a typical object with that particular colouur. For example, “sky blue” is a light shade of blue, like the colour of the sky. Here are some of the most common collocations: ruby red cherry red fiery orange burnt orange lemon yellow golden yellow emerald green olive green sky blue royal blue navy blue / midnight blue When you have something that is primarily one colour, but with a little bit of another colour included, we can use the word “tinge.” There are two ways to structure the sentence: The flowers are yellow with a tinge of pink in the middle. My cat’s fur is light gray with a slight brownish tinge. You can also use this form – a colour word plus –ISH – to describe mixes of colours. For example, “reddish brown” is a shade of brown with a strong portion of red, whereas “yellowish brown” is a shade of brown with a strong portion of yellow. Some colours look good together – in this case, we can say that the colours match. Other colours look terrible together – in this case, we can say that the colours clash. When the colour of a person’s clothes looks good with that person’s skin tone (colour of their skin), you can say “that colour suits you” or “that colour looks good on you.”
Finally, one tip about changing the colour of something. We use the verb “paint” in most cases – you paint a house and paint your nails. But we use the verb “dye” for hair and cloth/fabric – so you dye your hair blonde and dye a shirt blue.
Comments