How To Name And Pronounce Colors In French

There are a good many reasons to learn the names of colors in French. If you’re a student of the language, it’s basic ground you’ll need to cover pretty early on in your studies. If you’re traveling to a French-speaking country, you’ll need to have these handy to divert a major fashion emergency as you shop for clothes (quelle horreur !). And for everyone else, learning the correct pronunciation of blanc and noir will make you 4 percent classier (and more insufferable) when you discuss cinematic genres and fine wines.

Here’s a quick and handy guide to help you correctly name and pronounce common colors in French, as well as how to use them in a sentence. It’s a good step on your road to learning the whole French language!

The Basic Colors In French

the color — la couleur
red — rouge
orange — orange
yellow — jaune
green — vert
blue — bleu
purple — violet
pink — rose
brown — marron
black — noir
white — blanc
gray — gris
light — clair
dark — foncé
multicolored — multicolore

Gender And Colors In French

If you’re describing a plural noun, the color adjectives will generally end with an “s,” including bleu, which is an exception to the rule that “eu” endings become “eux” in their plural form.

Grammatical gender is also important to keep in mind. Colors like rouge, jaune and orange only need an -s tacked on at the end when they’re describing plural nouns, but some color adjectives might need a feminine -es for feminine nouns: verts/vertes, violets/violettes, noirs/noires, blancs/blanches, foncés/foncées, clairs/claires.

Other than that, there are two main exceptions here. Marron and couleur don’t have any feminine mark termination, so their plural forms will always be marrons and couleurs, whatever the gender. And in its masculine form, gris is invariable; however, it requires an extra “e” in its feminine form. So the plural form of gris/grise will be gris/grises.

That’s a lot to take in, so here are two quick charts showing you how the color names change in different contexts.

French Colors In Singular Form

French Colors In Plural Form

Using French Colors In A Sentence

The next thing to know is how to use the color words, which requires just a little bit of French grammar.. There are two main ways colors — and all other adjectives — can appear in French. First is a simple sentence like Le chat est noir. (“The cat is black.”), where the whole sentence is describing a particular object. You can also just say le chat noir (“the black cat”) as part of a larger sentence, where the adjective comes directly after the noun it describes. Here’s a few more examples.