handpicked color names

A handpicked list of 25577 unique color names from various sources and thousands of curated user submissions.

The names of color function like a thread attached to a frightfully slender needle, capable of stitching together our most delicate emotions and memories. When the needle hits the target, we feel either pleasure or empathy. Kenya Hara – White

About 📋

The aim of this project is to create as large a list of color names as possible while maintining a good name quality. We've merged various lists, modified the names when there were duplicates with different hex values, and shifted the colors a bit when there were identical colors with different names.

Explore 🌍

• Color Picker & Name Search Click the wheel to get name for a color, or just use the full text search.
• Color Picker: Click the colored surface to change the color or type in a hex value below the name.
• Color Picker II: Move your mouse and scroll to choose a color.
• Name Search: full text search on the color list.
• Color Distribution 3D view of all color names in different color spaces.
• Twitter Bot: Posts random colors and lets you submit new ones.

Color Name Submission 💌

via form 🌈 / or twitter 🐦

Make sure to read the naming rules before you contribute!

Color Count: 25577 🎉

~0.15% of the RGB color space

Color distribution 🛰

When coming up with new color names, it is vital to know what spots in a certain color-space are crowded and where there is still room for new colors. For example: Our API returns the closest RGB color to a given HEX value. To avoid too many colors snapping to the same name, we aim to distribute the colors evenly in the color space: Visualization

Usage 📖

Installation Node.js 📦

npm install color-name-list --save

or yarn add color-name-list

CDN 🌍

All Names 📚

JSON / JSON.min / CSV / YML / JS / XML / HTML / SCSS / CSS

Best of Names subset 🏆

JSON / JSON.min / CSV / YML / JS / XML / HTML / SCSS / CSS

API 🃏

https://api.color.pizza/v1/{{hexvalue without the #}},{{more comma separated values}}

Single Color

curl https://api.color.pizza/v1/212121

{
  "colors": [{
    "name": "Lead",
    "hex": "#212121",
    "rgb": {"r": 33, "g": 33, "b": 33},
    "distance": 0, // its an exact match
    "luminance": 22.062320231562225,
    "requestedHex": "#212121",
  }]
}

Multiple Colors

curl https://api.color.pizza/v1/212121,060606,ff0012,550055,123456

All Named Colors

curl https://api.color.pizza/v1/

In this case colors is not an object but an array of objects sorted by color-name

Unique Color-Names

by adding ?noduplicates=true every returned name will be unique. The closest color, that was not returned previously will be returned: curl https://api.color.pizza/v1/212121,212121?noduplicates=true

{
  "colors": [{
    "name": "Lead",
    "hex": "#212121",
    "rgb": { "r": 33, "g": 33, "b": 33 },
    "luminance": 22.062320231562225
  },{
    "name": "Abaddon Black",
    "hex": "#231f20",
    "rgb": { "r": 35, "g": 31, "b": 32 },
    "luminance": 21.30621829419759
  }]
}

Good Color-Names

Not all color-names are created equal; add ?goodnamesonly=true to your request URL to get a handpicked subset of names that were rated as good by humans. (Colors that are liked a lot on twitter and some of the team favourites).

Usage JS ⌨

Exact Color

import namedColors from 'color-name-list';

let someColor = namedColors.find(color => color.hex === '#ffffff');
console.log(someColor.name); // => white

let someNamedColor = namedColors.find(color => color.name === 'Eigengrau')
console.log(someColor.hex); // => #16161d

Closest Named Color

Since there are 16777216 possible RGB colors, you might use a library such as nearest-color or ClosestVector to help you find the the closest named color.

import nearestColor from 'nearest-color';
import namedColors from 'color-name-list';

// nearestColor need objects {name => hex} as input
const colors = colorNameList.reduce((o, { name, hex }) => Object.assign(o, { [name]: hex }), {});

const nearest = nearestColor.from(colors);

// get closest named color
nearest('#f1c1d1'); // => Fairy Tale

Alternative package: ktree

Note: If you are looking for something visually more accurate, you could: use DeltaE, or use the above snippet, combined with a transform from rgb to ciecam02 scaled to 0-255.

Building 🔨

npm install && npm run build

See package.json for more.

Sources 🗒

Sources: Names 📇

• Thousands of user submissions Twitter/Google Docs/Github
• Wikipedia list of named colors (2018-02-23)
• CSS/HTML color names
• Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours
• ntc.js
• xkcd color survey list
• htmlcsscolor.com
• OSX Crayons
• Crayola crayon
• Thailand weekday colors
• Chinese heavenly creatures colors
• Military Paint
• Olympian god colors
• Model Color Paints: Vallejo
• Fictional Colors (2018-05-09)
• Non English Transliterations: Japanese, Mandarin, Hindi, Persian, Russian
• Multiple paint, print, nail polish, model paint color lists
• Curated Machine Learning names from Matt DesLauriers and Nathan Kjer

Sources: Color 🎨

• 12-Bit & 8-Bit color palettes
• Pico-8 color palette
• Some Android Arts palettes

Contributors 🦑

• meodai Initiator, maintainer, name creator &, tooling
• Nirazul Name creator & tooling
• Bathos Tooling
• Metafizzy Logo Sponsor 💖

Color Namers

Verena the naming overloard, Jess the name wizzard, Syl, Stephanie Stutz, Simbiasamba, Jason Wilson, Inês João, Nick Niles, Qwhex, Ichatdelune, basgys, Shelina S., Trevor Elia, cheesits456, Sandhya Subram

Disclaimer 👮🏾‍

In the process we try to remove all names that are offensive or racist, as well as protected brand names. As some of the color names come from other lists, some bad ones might slip in. Please report them, they will be removed as quickly as possible.

Latest Color Names 🔖