Colors in German: 25 Essential Color Words
🇩🇪 German · 25 cards · A1 · by Annika Vogel
Colours are usually the second thing you learn in German and the first thing that trips you up, because a few of them refuse to behave. Rot, blau and grün take normal adjective endings; rosa, lila, orange and beige officially take none at all, even though half of Hamburg says eine orangene Jacke anyway. This deck covers the everyday basics from rot to türkis, the shade builders hell- and dunkel-, and the words you really hear on the U-Bahn: bunt, blass, knallrot. Learn every card together with its example sentence — that way the ending sticks along with the colour.
Flip through the cards, then switch to Quiz. Tap the play button on any row to hear it. The full table below is there to read, print or copy into your own flashcard app.
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All 25 cards
| # | German | English | Example | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | die Farbe Feminine; plural: die Farben. Also means paint. | color, paint | Welche Farbe hat deine neue Jacke? What color is your new jacket? | |
| 2 | rot rot werden = to blush. | red | Sie hat sich die Nägel rot lackiert. She painted her nails red. | |
| 3 | blau Colloquially blau sein means "to be drunk". | blue | Guck mal, wie blau der Himmel ist! Look how blue the sky is! | |
| 4 | gelb | yellow | Im Herbst werden die Blätter gelb. In autumn the leaves turn yellow. | |
| 5 | grün As a noun it is capitalised: bei Grün gehen = to cross on green. | green | Sie hat grüne Augen. She has green eyes. | |
| 6 | schwarz Klamotten is casual for "clothes". | black | Er trägt fast nur schwarze Klamotten. He wears almost nothing but black clothes. | |
| 7 | weiß Don't confuse it with ich weiß ("I know"). | white | Wir haben die Wände weiß gestrichen. We painted the walls white. | |
| 8 | grau | grey, gray | Im November wirkt die Stadt total grau. In November the city looks totally grey. | |
| 9 | braun | brown | Ich färbe mir die Haare braun. I'm dyeing my hair brown. | |
| 10 | orange Standard German adds no ending; the safe inflected alternative is orangefarben (eine orangefarbene Jacke). In speech you'll hear "eine orangene Jacke". | orange | Sie hat sich eine orange Jacke gekauft. She bought herself an orange jacket. | |
| 11 | rosa No adjective endings in standard German; colloquially also "ein rosanes Kleid". | pink (soft, pale pink) | Meine Tochter will nur rosa Sachen tragen. My daughter only wants to wear pink things. | |
| 12 | pink Stronger and louder than rosa; borrowed from English and normally inflected. | bright pink, hot pink | Sie hat pinke Kopfhörer. She has hot pink headphones. | |
| 13 | lila No endings in standard German; colloquially also "ein lilanes Sofa". | purple, violet | Das Sofa im Wohnzimmer ist lila. The sofa in the living room is purple. | |
| 14 | türkis Inflects normally: ein türkises Kleid. | turquoise | Das Wasser leuchtete türkis. The water shone turquoise. | |
| 15 | beige Pronounced the French way ("behsch"); officially uninflected, but "ein beiger Mantel" is common in speech. | beige | Beige finde ich einfach langweilig. I just find beige boring. | |
| 16 | golden Adjective form; the metal itself is das Gold. | gold, golden | Sie trägt goldene Ohrringe. She's wearing gold earrings. | |
| 17 | silbern In everyday speech people often just say "silber": "Das Auto ist silber." | silver | Wir suchen einen silbernen Rahmen. We're looking for a silver frame. | |
| 18 | hellblau Written as one word; the ending goes on the end: hellblaues. | light blue | Er hatte ein hellblaues Hemd an. He was wearing a light blue shirt. | |
| 19 | dunkelgrün Same pattern with dunkelblau, dunkelrot, dunkelgrau. | dark green | Unsere Haustür ist dunkelgrün. Our front door is dark green. | |
| 20 | hell Also used as a prefix for pale shades: hellgrün, hellgrau. | light, bright, pale | Ich mag helle Farben im Sommer. I like light colors in summer. | |
| 21 | dunkel Loses the second e when inflected: dunkel → dunkle, dunkles. | dark | Im Winter trage ich meistens dunkle Farben. In winter I mostly wear dark colors. | |
| 22 | bunt Means "many colors at once", not one bright color. | colorful, multicolored | Auf dem Markt ist es schön bunt. The market is nice and colorful. | |
| 23 | einfarbig Opposite of gemustert (patterned). | plain, in one color | Nimm lieber ein einfarbiges T-Shirt. Better take a plain, one-color T-shirt. | |
| 24 | blass Used for skin and for washed-out colors. | pale | Du siehst heute richtig blass aus. You look really pale today. | |
| 25 | knallrot Colloquial. The prefix knall- intensifies: knallgelb, knallgrün. | bright red, scarlet | Er wurde knallrot, als sie ihn ansprach. He turned bright red when she spoke to him. |
Hamburg native. I spent years explaining German word order to exchange students and still enjoy it. My decks favour the words you hear on the U-Bahn over the ones in textbooks.
Questions about this deck
- Why do rosa, lila, orange and beige have no adjective endings?
- They came into German as nouns — rosa from Latin rosa, lila from the lilac, orange from the fruit, beige from French — and never picked up the normal adjective declension. So standard German keeps them flat: ein rosa Kleid, eine lila Tasche, eine orange Jacke. If the flat form feels wrong, use the -farben compounds: ein orangefarbenes Auto, eine lilafarbene Tasche. In everyday speech you will constantly hear ein lilanes Kleid or eine orangene Tasche — fine at the kiosk, but avoid it in exams.
- What is the difference between rosa and pink in German?
- Rosa is the soft, pale pink of roses or baby clothes. Pink, borrowed from English, is the loud neon shade — hot pink or magenta. Unlike rosa, pink takes normal endings: pinke Schuhe, ein pinkes Handy. If you say rosa when you mean neon, Germans will picture something much gentler.
- How do I say light blue and dark blue in German?
- Add hell- for light and dunkel- for dark and write it as one word: hellblau, dunkelblau, hellgrün, dunkelgrau. Only the end of the compound takes the adjective ending: ein hellblaues Hemd, eine dunkelgrüne Tür. For a very intense shade, everyday German uses knall-: knallrot, knallgelb.
- Are German color words capitalized?
- As adjectives they are lowercase: das rote Auto, die Bluse ist weiß. When a color is used as a noun it is neuter and capitalized: Meine Lieblingsfarbe ist Blau, das Rot der Ampel, bei Grün gehen. So Grün gefällt mir, but ein grüner Pullover.
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