Colours in Russian: красный, синий and the Two Blues

Russian colours are adjectives, so they agree with the noun: кра́сный сви́тер, but кра́сная футбо́лка. Russian also has two basic blues where English has one. Learn the twelve words, the four endings and the two blues, and you have the whole topic.

The whole system on one screen

The ending is coloured by what the noun is:

Nearly every colour follows the first column. Си́ний has its own soft endings, and голубо́й is the same as кра́сный apart from its stressed masculine -ой.

• Како́го цвета́ твой сви́тер? Си́ний. - What colour is your jumper? Dark blue.

The colours

Two have stories worth knowing. Кра́сный once meant beautiful, which is why Red Square, Кра́сная пло́щадь, had its name long before red was a political colour. And ры́жий is the colour of a fox or a ginger cat: natural red hair is ры́жий, never кра́сный.

• У нас ры́жий кот. - We've got a ginger cat.

Agreement: красный, красная, красное, красные

A colour takes the ending its noun demands, exactly like но́вый:

1234

1. 1бе́лый дом
2. 2бе́лая соба́ка
3. 3чёрный кот
4. 4кра́сная маши́на

белый дом, a white house; белая собака, a white dog; чёрный кот, a black cat; красная машина, a red car. Same colour, a different ending for each gender.

Джи́нсы only exists in the plural, so its colour is always plural too, even for one pair:

• Э́то мои́ синие джи́нсы. - These are my dark blue jeans.

The colour can also come after the noun as a sentence of its own, because Russian drops is in the present. It still agrees:

• Сви́тер кра́сный. - The jumper is red.
• Футбо́лка бе́лая. - The T-shirt is white.

One spelling rule: after к, г, х, ж, ш, ч and щ Russian never writes ы, so the plural of ры́жий is ры́жие:

• ры́жие кошки - ginger cats

Синий and голубой: two blues

English has one word, blue, and qualifies it: dark blue, light blue, navy, sky blue. Russian has two basic words and treats them as two colours:

• Не́бо голубо́е, а мо́ре си́нее. - The sky is light blue and the sea is dark blue.

Calling a navy jumper голубо́й is not a slight imprecision to a Russian ear; it is the wrong colour, as calling a red jumper pink would be in English. When you are unsure, look at how dark it is: dark is си́ний, pale is голубо́й.

For other shades, Russian puts тёмно- (dark) or светло́- (light) in front, and only the last part agrees:

• тёмно-си́ний сви́тер - a navy jumper
• светло́-зелёная футбо́лка - a light green T-shirt

Soft синий: the one with -яя

Colour here marks the gender ending again:

Most colours end in a hard -ый and take -ая, -ое, -ые. Си́ний has a soft stem, so its endings are soft too:

• си́няя кни́га - a dark blue book
• си́нее пла́тье - a dark blue dress

The mistake to avoid is the half-hard синая, which no Russian writes. Of the twelve basic colours, си́ний is the only one built this way.

What colour is it? Какого цвета?

The question is a fixed phrase, Како́го цвета́, literally of what colour, followed by the thing:

• Како́го цвета́ твой сви́тер? - What colour is your jumper?
• Како́го цвета́ э́та футбо́лка? - What colour is this T-shirt?

The everyday answer is just the colour, agreeing with the thing you are describing:

• Си́ний. Он си́ний. - Dark blue. It's dark blue.
• Бе́лая. Она́ бе́лая. - White. It's white.

Clothes and colours in a shop

A few words carry most of a clothes shop:

And three sentences to say with them:

• Како́й у вас разме́р? - What size are you?
• Где зе́ркало? - Where is the mirror?
• У вас есть тако́й, но си́ний? - Do you have one like this in dark blue?

The last one is worth learning whole: such a one, but dark blue. Тако́й agrees with the thing you are holding, and so does the colour:

• У вас есть така́я, но бе́лая? - Do you have this one in white? (a T-shirt)

Mistakes English speakers make

What to do next

1. Name the colour of five things you are wearing, with the right ending.
2. Find one thing that is си́ний and one that is голубо́й.
3. Do the drill below.