Colors in Arabic: All the Basic Colors (With Pronunciation)

The word for color in Arabic is لَوْن (lawn), and the plural, colors, is أَلْوان (alwaan). The six basic colors are أَحْمَر (aHmar, red), أَزْرَق (azraq, blue), أَخْضَر (akhDar, green), أَصْفَر (aSfar, yellow), أَسْوَد (aswad, black), and أَبْيَض (abyaD, white). Each basic color has a separate feminine form that must match the noun it describes.

This guide covers the colors you use most in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), the shared form understood across the Arab world. Every color comes with its Arabic script, transliteration, and meaning. The one feature that surprises new learners is that Arabic colors change shape depending on whether the thing they describe is masculine or feminine — and, once you see the pattern, it is easy to predict.

What is the word for “color” in Arabic?

The word for color in Arabic is لَوْن (lawn). To make it plural — colors — you say أَلْوان (alwaan). These two words let you talk about the topic itself before you name a single shade.

What are the basic colors in Arabic?

The basic colors in Arabic are red, blue, green, yellow, black, and white, plus the ideas of light and dark. These six core colors all follow the same masculine word shape, أَفْعَل (afʿal), which is why they rhyme with one another.

Notice how each word starts with the same أَ (a-) sound. This shared shape is a memory aid: once you can hear the أَفْعَل pattern, a new basic color is far easier to slot in alongside the ones you already know.

How do colors change for masculine and feminine in Arabic?

Basic Arabic colors have two forms, and the color must match the gender of the noun it describes. The masculine form follows the أَفْعَل (afʿal) pattern, while the feminine form follows فَعْلاء (faʿlaaʾ). So a red book is كِتاب أَحْمَر (kitaab aHmar), because “book” is masculine, but a red car is سَيّارة حَمْراء (sayyaara Hamraaʾ), because “car” is feminine.

This masculine-and-feminine pairing runs all through Arabic, so the effort you spend on it here pays off elsewhere too. The same idea of matching a describing word to a masculine or feminine noun appears with family words, where the feminine version often just adds an ending — a pattern we walk through in family members in Arabic.

What are the other common colors in Arabic?

The other everyday colors — brown, orange, pink, purple, and gray — work differently from the six basic ones. They are built from nouns and end in the suffix ـي (-ee), so they do not use the أَفْعَل pattern. For these, the feminine is made simply by adding ـة (-a): بُنّي (bunnee, brown) becomes بُنّية (bunniyya).

Several of these come straight from a noun you can spot: بُرْتُقالي (burtuqaalee, orange) comes from بُرْتُقال (burtuqaal, the fruit orange), وَرْدي (wardee, pink) comes from وَرْدة (warda, a rose), and رَمادي (ramaadee, gray) comes from رَماد (ramaad, ash). Seeing the root word inside the color makes it stick.

How do you ask “what color is this?” in Arabic?

You ask “what color is this?” in Arabic with ما لَوْنُ هٰذا؟ (maa lawnu haadhaa?). To answer, use لَوْنُهُ (lawnuhu, “its color is”) followed by the color — for example, لَوْنُهُ أَزْرَق (lawnuhu azraq, “its color is blue”). The ما (maa) that opens this question is one of the core Arabic question words — who, what, where, when, and how.

• ما لَوْنُ هٰذا؟ (maa lawnu haadhaa?) — “what color is this?”
• لَوْنُهُ أَحْمَر (lawnuhu aHmar) — “its color is red”
• هٰذا قَميص أَزْرَق (haadhaa qamees azraq) — “this is a blue shirt”
• أُحِبُّ اللَّوْنَ الأَخْضَر (uHibbu al-lawn al-akhDar) — “I like the color green”

When a color describes a specific, definite noun, it takes the definite article الـ (al-) too, so both words carry it: السَّيّارة الحَمْراء (as-sayyaara al-Hamraaʾ, “the red car”). The color always follows the noun in Arabic, never before it.

How do you say light and dark colors in Arabic?

You say a light color by adding فاتِح (faatiH, light) after it, and a dark color by adding غامِق (ghaamiq, dark). So light blue is أَزْرَق فاتِح (azraq faatiH) and dark green is أَخْضَر غامِق (akhDar ghaamiq). These two words let you describe almost any shade without learning a new color name.

With roughly a dozen color words plus فاتِح and غامِق, you can name most things you see around you. Colors also make excellent practice sentences because you can point at objects all day and describe them — a natural next step after learning 50 most common Arabic words for beginners.

How do you make Arabic colors stick?

You make Arabic colors stick by learning them in gendered pairs — أَحْمَر and حَمْراء, أَزْرَق and زَرْقاء — and by reviewing them by ear until both forms come quickly. Because the six basic colors share one pattern and the rest share another, learning them as two small groups is far more efficient than one at a time.

That is exactly how Kalam Daily is built: a new word every day, native-speaker audio so you learn each color’s real sound, and spaced repetition that brings each one back just before you would forget it. Start with red, blue, and green this week, add the feminine forms next, and you will be describing the world around you in Arabic before long. When you are ready for the bigger picture, our Arabic learning path maps out what to study next.