French colours

Which colours change, and which don't

Most colours agree with the noun they describe, the same way any adjective does:un pantalon noir but une veste noire,un sac bleu but une chemise bleue. A handful never change at all, because they come from nouns rather than true adjectives —orange, rose and marron stay exactly the same whether they describe un pull or une jupe. There is no shortcut for telling the two groups apart; the table below marks each one.

blanc is the one worth memorising specially — its feminine,blanche, changes the sound as well as the spelling, unlike noir/noire or vert/verte, where the feminine just adds a silent -e.

Where the colour goes in the sentence

In English the colour comes before the noun — a red car. In French it comes after:une voiture rouge, un manteau noir,des yeux verts. This is not a stylistic preference, it is the rule for colour adjectives without exception, and putting the colour first is one of the most recognisable markers of an English-influenced sentence. Punjabi puts the colour first too (ਲਾਲ ਕਾਰ), so the pull comes from both directions and is worth over-practising early.

The agreement then follows the noun, not the colour: un pull vert,une écharpe verte, des pulls verts,des écharpes vertes. If you are unsure of a noun's gender the colour will expose it, which is why noun gender is worth drilling alongside this — the le ou la drill covers 151 common nouns.

Compound colours never agree

As soon as a colour is qualified by a second word — clair (light),foncé (dark), or another colour — the whole expression freezes and takes no ending at all: une robe bleu clair (not bleue claire),des yeux vert foncé, une chemise bleu-vert. Learners who have just mastered agreement tend to over-apply it here, and it is a common written-exam slip.

The same freezing explains the invariable group in the table. Orange,rose and marron are nouns doing an adjective's job — an orange, a rose, a chestnut — and a noun used this way does not take adjective endings.Rose is the exception that trips people up: it looks like it already ends in -e and behaves as though it agrees, but it never adds -s either (des chaussures rose).

Colours you will meet outside the colour chart

Several colour words carry meanings that have nothing to do with colour, and they turn up in listening sections. Être vert de rage is to be furious;avoir une peur bleue is to be terrified, not sad — the English mapping of blue to sadness does not exist in French. Une nuit blanche is a sleepless night, voir la vie en rose is to see the bright side, and un travail au noir is undeclared work. In Canada you will also meet le temps gris constantly in weather reports.

The full list

All 11 colours the drill uses, with the feminine form and Gurmukhi pronunciation.

Word list last updated 2026-07-26.

Keep going

• Clothing, body and colours (full lesson)A1
• Adjectives and agreementA2
• Practise noun genderGame