Misconception: Colour and hue mean the same thing

Concept Corrected: There is more to colour than just hue

Many people when asked: “What colour is your new shirt?” will reply “Green!” (if it is a green shirt…). But what kind of green? Dark green? Pale green? Mint-green? Olive-green? Describing your shirt only as green does not give the full colour story.

The large rectangle has one hue, but many colours. The smaller squares below all have the same hue (green) but are different colours. Hue is only one of colour’s perceptual attributes, and is not enough to fully describe a colour’s appearance. It identifies the family to which a colour belongs. Examples of hues include green, red, yellow, and blue. Other parameters which help tell the full colour story include describing how pale or dark a colour appears, and how vivid or muted a colour appears. In everyday language, we may use qualifiers like mint-green or olive-green or grass-green to try to specify qualities of a colour beyond its hue. There are also formal ways to organize colours, which precisely define ways to describe all of a colour’s attributes.