About

Colour Spinner explores how colors are named, translated, and perceived across languages and viewers. This interactive tool is built on data from the Colour Naming experiment (colornaming.net). The research team: A. Sinkeviciute, R. Ahmed, J. Stutters, N. Kuri Perez Villaman, A. Koliousis, R. T. Eskew Jr., A. Stockman, and D. Mylonas. This work was funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

How to Use

All panels are linked. Selecting a colour or name updates the entire interface.

Picker

Select a colour by clicking in the triangle and hue ring, entering values (RGB, HEX, LAB, etc.), or using the spinner for random selection.

Namer

Shows the most likely colour name in the selected language with a confidence score.

Low confidence indicates naming uncertainty.

Translator

Shows how the colour name in the source language translates to the target language.

The best translation is the largest disk with the strongest line. Disk size and strength of the lines indicate confidence of the translations.

Thesaurus

Shows synonyms (solid lines) and antonyms (dashed lines) of colour names. Ticker lines show stronger relationships and thinner lines show weaker relationship

Mapper

Shows the top n colours associated with a colour name, from best example (top left) to variation.

Vision & Age Simulation

Simulate colours as seen by users with colour vision deficiencies or age-related vision changes (while the colour names remain the same).

Profiler

The radar plot visualizes the linguistic, geometric, and behavioural characteristics of a colour name, where larger areas indicate stronger properties:

1. Agreement

Measures how consistently different people apply the same colour name to the same region of colour space. High agreement means that people strongly agree on what colours the name refers to (e.g. “red”).

2. Linguistic Frequency

Measures how often the colour name appears in natural language usage. High frequency shows that the term is commonly used.

3. Derivative Count

The number of derived or morphologically related forms of the colour name (e.g. modifiers, compounds, adjectival forms).

4. Size

The perceptual volume of colour space associated with the name. Large size shows that the name covers a broad range of colours.

5. Shape

The convexity of the shape of a colour category in perceptual colour space.

6. Lightness

The extent to which the colour name is associated with lighter or darker values.

7. Chroma

The saturation or intensity associated with the colour name. High chroma is associated with vivid colours and low chroma with pale colours close to the neutral axis

Audio

Pick a colour in the Picker to hear its pronunciation.

Voices:

• American English: Gavin Rolls
• British English: Sara Rammu
• French: Philippine Devillers
• Greek: Dimitris Mylonas
• Spanish: Nicolas Kuri Perez Villaman
• Himba: Kasuko