Colors in GermanColors, Shades & Hues

Learning the colors in German is important, in order to to be able to describe the things around you. In this lesson, we're going to have a look at basic & complementary colors, as well as words for different shades in German (e.g. dark blue, light green).

Basic Colours in German

Take a look at this table of basic colors:

die Farbe
color
rot
red
blau
blue
gelb
yellow
grün
green
schwarz
black
weiß
white

Listen to the recordings and repeat the words out loud, to familiarise yourself with them.

You'll notice that some of the words for colors in German are similar to those in English:

Der Apfel ist rot.

The apple is red.
Der Himmel ist blau.

The sky is blue.

Whilst others are totally different:

Die Fledermaus ist schwarz.

The bat is black.
Die Banane ist gelb.

The banana is yellow.
☝️Tip

To memorise the colors, it may be helpful to intentionally associate each color with a specific image. For example, it might help to envision a black bat in your head whilst thinking of the word schwarz. Once that image is strongly associated with the word, the next time you see schwarz in writing, you'll be reminded of the bat, and will know what color is meant!

Complementary Colors in German

Here are some other common colors worth learning.

orange
orange
pink
pink
braun
brown
grau
grey
lila
violet
violett
violet
türkis
turquoise
beige
beige
magenta
magenta

Shades & Hues

Lastly, here are two important words that will come in handy in this section:

hell
light
dunkel
dark

In German, we may compound hell or dunkel with a color to create new, more specific words:

hellrot
light red
dunkelrot
dark red
hellblau
light blue
dunkelblau
dark blue

Well done 🎉!

You have learned the German colors! Now we may use these words to describe the subject or object in a sentence.

What other adjectives could we use? Head over to the next lesson on German adjectives, to find out.