French guides · Everyday vocabulary

The colors in French, and how they change shape.

Red is rouge (ROOZH), blue is bleu (BLUH), green is vert (VEHR), yellow is jaune (ZHOHN) and black is noir (NWAHR). The words are easy. The two surprises are what comes next: in French the color goes after the thing it describes, and most colors change their ending to match it. Here is the whole set, with both surprises made painless.

Cocoon French·Updated 27 August 2026·5 min read

Every color, at a glance

The first column is the form you use with a masculine word; the last is what happens when the word is feminine. Where the change is silent, we say so — several of these look different on paper and sound identical out loud.

French	Say it	English	Feminine form
rouge	ROOZH	red	rouge — no change
bleu	BLUH	blue	bleue — sounds the same
vert	VEHR	green	verte (vehrt)
jaune	ZHOHN	yellow	jaune — no change
orange	oh-RAHNZH	orange	orange — never changes
violet	vee-oh-LAY	purple	violette (vee-oh-LET)
rose	ROHZ	pink	rose — no change
noir	NWAHR	black	noire — sounds the same
blanc	BLAHN	white	blanche (BLAHNSH)
gris	GREE	grey / gray	grise (GREEZ)
marron	mah-ROHN	brown	marron — never changes
beige	BEHZH	beige	beige — no change
doré	doh-RAY	golden, gold	dorée — sounds the same
argenté	ar-zhahn-TAY	silver	argentée — sounds the same

(If you spell it colours rather than colors, nothing here changes — the French words are the same on both sides of the Atlantic.)

Colors follow the noun

English stacks the color in front: a red car, a black cat. French does the reverse, every single time.

Une voiture rouge — a red car, literally "a car red".
Un chat noir — a black cat, literally "a cat black".
Une maison blanche — a white house.
Des yeux verts — green eyes.

This is not an oddity reserved for colors. Most French adjectives sit after their noun, and only a small, very common group — grand, petit, beau, vieux and a handful more — go in front. No color ever does. If you catch yourself about to say une rouge voiture, flip it and you are right.

Agreement, gently

A French adjective copies the gender and number of the noun it describes, and colors are adjectives. So one word gives you four shapes:

un pull vert — a green jumper (masculine)
une veste verte — a green jacket (feminine, add -e)
des pulls verts — green jumpers (add -s)
des chaussures vertes — green shoes (feminine and plural, add -es)

Two shortcuts make this much smaller than it looks. First, a color that already ends in -e has nothing to add for the feminine: rouge, jaune, rose and beige are identical either way — un vélo rouge, une porte rouge. They still take an -s in the plural: des portes rouges.

Second, your ear does most of the work. Bleu and bleue are pronounced the same, and so are noir and noire. The ones you can actually hear are the colors that end in a silent consonant and then wake it up: vert → verte, gris → grise, blanc → blanche.

And then there are two colors that refuse to move at all. Orange and marron started life as nouns — the fruit and the chestnut — and a noun borrowed as an adjective keeps its own shape. So it is un pull orange, des pulls orange, une écharpe marron, des chaussures marron: never an -e, never an -s.

Light, dark, and in between

To shade a color, add clair (light) or foncé (dark) after it — the same after-the-noun instinct, one level down. Bleu clair (bluh KLEHR) is light blue, bleu foncé (bluh fohn-SAY) is dark blue, and the pattern travels: vert clair, gris foncé, rose clair.

A two-word color stops changing

As soon as a color needs two words, the whole thing freezes — no -e, no -s, whatever the noun is doing. So it is des yeux bleu clair (light blue eyes), not bleus clairs, and une robe bleu foncé for a dark blue dress. This is the same instinct as orange and marron: when a color is really a little phrase, French leaves it alone.

Brown: marron or brun?

French has two browns, and learners pick the wrong one surprisingly often. Marron is the everyday brown for things: un sac marron (a brown bag), des chaussures marron (brown shoes), une porte marron.

Brun (BRUHN) is mostly reserved for hair and colouring: les cheveux bruns (brown hair), un homme brun, une femme brune — and une brune on its own is a brunette. Unlike marron, brun agrees normally.

The rule of thumb: if you can put it in a shopping bag, it is marron. If it grows on someone's head, it is brun.

Hear it, then say it

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Quick answers

Colors, answered.

The questions learners actually ask about French colors.

What are the basic colors in French?+

The everyday set is rouge (red), bleu (blue), vert (green), jaune (yellow), orange (orange), violet (purple), rose (pink), noir (black), blanc (white), gris (grey) and marron (brown). Those eleven will describe almost anything you can point at.

Do colors go before or after the noun?+

After. French says une voiture rouge — literally "a car red" — and un chat noir, "a cat black". No color adjective is ever placed in front of its noun, which is the opposite of English word order.

Which French colors never change form?+

Orange and marron never change at all: un pull orange, des pulls orange. Two-word colors like bleu clair and bleu foncé are also frozen. Colors already ending in -e — rouge, jaune, rose, beige — look the same in the masculine and feminine, but they do still add -s in the plural.

What is the difference between marron and brun?+

Marron is the everyday brown for objects: un sac marron, des chaussures marron. Brun is used mostly for hair and colouring — les cheveux bruns, une femme brune. If you are describing a thing rather than a person, marron is almost always the word you want.

How do you say light blue and dark blue?+

Light blue is bleu clair (bluh KLEHR) and dark blue is bleu foncé (bluh fohn-SAY). The same pattern works for any color: vert clair, gris foncé. Once a color has two words like this it stops changing — des yeux bleu clair.