Colour facts for kids

Results of adding different colours of light

Results of subtracting different colours of light

Pigment Colours - Classification

Colour or color is a property of light as seen by people. In Latin, as well as the United States, the word is spelled “color” (without a ‘u’.) In traditional English, it is spelled “colour” (with a ‘u’).

The most common colour names are:

• Red
• Orange
• Yellow
• Green
• Blue
• Purple
• Brown
• Magenta
• Tan
• Cyan
• Olive
• Maroon
• Navy
• Aquamarine
• Turquoise
• Silver
• Lime
• Teal
• Indigo
• Violet
• Pink
• Black
• White
• Gray

"Primary colours" can be mixed to make the other colours. Red, yellow and blue are the three traditional primary colours. The primary colours for television screens and computer monitors are red, green and blue. Printers use magenta, yellow and cyan as their primary colours; they also use black.

People who can not see colours or have a distorted sense of colour are called colour blind. Most colour blind people are male.

Colours are sometimes added to food. Food colouring is used to colour food, but some foods have natural colourings, like beta carotene.

When something has no colour, it is transparent. An example is air.

The science of color is sometimes called chromatics, colorimetry, or simply color science

A translucent material is not the same as a colourless material because it can still have a colour, like stained glass.

Related pages

• List of colours

Images for kids

• 

  Pencils shown in various colors

• 

  Continuous optical spectrum rendered into the sRGB color space.

• 

  This picture contains one million pixels, each one a different color

• 

  The CIE 1931 color space xy chromaticity diagram with the visual locus plotted using the CIE (2006) physiologically-relevant LMS fundamental color matching functions transformed into the CIE 1931 xy color space and converted into Adobe RGB. The triangle shows the gamut of Adobe RGB. The Planckian locus is shown with color temperatures labeled in Kelvins. The outer curved boundary is the spectral (or monochromatic) locus, with wavelengths shown in nanometers. Note that the colors in this file are being specified using Adobe RGB. Areas outside the triangle cannot be accurately rendered since they are outside the gamut of Adobe RGB, therefore they have been interpreted. Note that the colors depicted depend on the gamut and color accuracy of your display.

• 

  Twelve main pigment colors

See also

In Spanish: Color para niños