Colors in German
Learn all the colors in German and how to use them.
What you'll learn
In this lesson, we'll learn the colors in German and how to use them to describe everyday objects. Colors come up constantly in conversation — clothes, food, signs — and they're a friendly first step into using adjectives.
Learning colors in German is essential for describing the world around you.
In this lesson, we'll cover basic and complementary colors, as well as words for different shades (e.g, dark blue, light green).
1. Basic Colours in German
Here's a table of basic colors:
- die Farbecolor
- rotred
- blaublue
- gelbyellow
- grüngreen
- schwarzblack
- weißwhite
Listen to the recordings and repeat the words out loud to get familiar with them. You'll notice that some German color words are similar to their English counterparts:
Der Apfel ist rot.
The apple is red.
Der Himmel ist blau.
The sky is blue.
While others are completely different:
Die Fledermaus ist schwarz.
The bat is black.
Die Banane ist gelb.
The banana is yellow.
Tip
2. Complementary Colors in German
Here are some other popular colors to learn.
- orangeorange
- pinkpink
- braunbrown
- graugrey
- lilaviolet
- violettviolet
- türkisturquoise
- beigebeige
- magentamagenta
3. Shades & Hues
Finally, here are two useful key words:
- helllight
- dunkeldark
In German, you can combine hell (light) or dunkel (dark) with a color to create more specific shades:
- hellrotlight red
- dunkelrotdark red
- hellblaulight blue
- dunkelblaudark blue
Well done 🎉!
Now you know the German colors! You can use these words to describe subjects or objects in a sentence. Curious about what other adjectives you can learn? Head over to the next lesson on German adjectives to find out!
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