Name Every Shade of the Rainbow With This 'Color Thesaurus'

Can’t differentiate cobalt from azure or cerulean, but not satisfied with just calling something "blue"? Instead of choosing a word at random, writers and anyone else looking to expand their color vocabulary can now reference Ingrid Sundberg’s "Color Thesaurus."

While working on a fantasy novel, the writer and children’s book illustrator found herself struggling to describe the images in the book as vividly as she would have liked, according the The Independent. Looking to spice up her prose, Sundberg began to compile a personal "thesaurus" of color names by pulling from sources all around her. "I love to stop in the paint section of a hardware store and find new names for red or white or yellow," the author writes on her website. "Having a variety of color names at my fingertips helps me to create specificity in my writing. I can paint a more evocative image in my reader’s mind if I describe a character’s hair as the color of rust or carrot-squash, rather than red."

Her guides have proven useful to more than just authors. Sundberg tells The Independent that she’s received emails from artists, wedding planners, and elementary school teachers thanking her for her color charts. They’ve even been used by an astronomer to pinpoint different shifts in light.

While Sundberg’s infographics do match words to specific shades, she insists that the project is meant to be used as more of a thesaurus than a dictionary. "I doubt there can be an 'official color guide' as color is so subjective," she told Bored Panda. After receiving such a positive response to her color charts, Sundberg is now experimenting with different types of visual thesauruses. Her current projects include one for hair color and one for physical emotional cues. You can check out some of Sundberg's color thesaurus entries below.

Images courtesy of Ingrid Sundberg.