Light bluish gray lego

Обновлено: 04.05.2024

Т.к. в поиске подобную тему не нашел (возможно плохо искал), спрашиваю здесь. В далеких 2000-2004 годах (мой первый этап увлечения лего) детальки были коричневого (Brown), темно-серого (Dark Gray) и серого (Light Gray) цветов. Теперь вместо темно-серого - Dark Bluish Gray, вместо светло-серого - Light Bluish Gray, а коричневых теперь целых два: Dark Brown и Reddish Brown. Хоть черный остался черным. Все бы ничего, только при постройке, сооружения не очень красиво выглядят с серым цветом четырех оттенков. Собственно вопрос: на основании чего лего меняет оттенки цветов/добавляет новые и как часто это происходит?

У меня тоже есть детальки танового - светло-желтого цвета (и не то и не другое). Приходится с этим мирится. Как-то раз прикупила парочку совершенно одинаковых наборов, и. красные детали в них были разного тона, причём довольно сильно отличались. Возможно всё дело в том, что у компании LEGO несколько заводов в разных странах?

Насколько я знаю, красный и жёлтый цвет тоже бывает "разный", но в списке цветов на БЛ они считаются как один.

dozi писал(а): Все бы ничего, только при постройке, сооружения не очень красиво выглядят с серым цветом четырех оттенков.

Смотря какое сооружение Например, если строить какое-то средневековое здание с имитацией каменной кладки, смесь четырёх серых цветов выглядит очень красиво.

Мой магазин "Lakomka" на BrickLink'e - множество редких и не очень фигурок, деталей и наборов по доступным ценам!

Жёлтый и светло-жёлтый - просто разные цвета. Если не ошибаюсь, вокзал на стенде СИТИ был как раз из светло-жёлтого.

А по поводу смены коричневого и серых цветов. Сам не понимаю. И пока не нашёл ни одной статьи по этому поводу.

Rover писал(а): Насколько я знаю, красный и жёлтый цвет тоже бывает "разный", но в списке цветов на БЛ они считаются как один.

По аналогии с производством керамической плитки, могу предположить - Всё зависит от пигмента добавляемого в состав изделия. В зависимости от партии, колеровочные машины, выдают погрешность незаметную для них, но заметную для человеческого глаза.

sexton писал(а): По аналогии с производством керамической плитки, могу предположить - Всё зависит от пигмента добавляемого в состав изделия. В зависимости от партии, колеровочные машины, выдают погрешность незаметную для них, но заметную для человеческого глаза.

Это понятно. Но вообще в этой теме стоит вопрос, почему ЛЕГО сменило цвета с Brown, Dark Gray и Light Gray на Dark Bluish Gray, Light Bluish Gray и Reddish Brown соответственно.

На сайте есть информация,по моему про путешествие кого-то на завод лего. Там как раз обсуждался вопрос о цвете деталей. Они ответили так: "иногда цвет деталей может отличаться из-за того,что поставщиков пластика у них много и технологии производства могут отличаться друг от друга"

Aleksey ru

Aleksey ru писал(а): На сайте есть информация,по моему про путешествие кого-то на завод лего. Там как раз обсуждался вопрос о цвете деталей. Они ответили так: "иногда цвет деталей может отличаться из-за того,что поставщиков пластика у них много и технологии производства могут отличаться друг от друга"

Здесь вопрос СОВСЕМ НЕ ОБ ЭТОМ. Тут спрашивается, почему ЛЕГО сменило цвета с Brown, Dark Gray и Light Gray на Dark Bluish Gray, Light Bluish Gray и Reddish Brown соответственно.

Извините, что запоздало, но всё-таки отвечаю.

Когда это произошло (кажется в 2004 году), то сообщество (иностранное) было жутко удивлено и возмущено этим фактом. Вопрос "почему" задавался много раз и в разных формах, ни одного (. ) вразумительного ответа получено не было. Были ответы типа "новые оттенки лучше совместимы с общей палитрой цветов", "новые оттенки привлекательнее для детей чем старые" и тому подобное. При этом в других случаях были комментарии типа "основная аудитория - это дети, которые вообще не очень переживают по поводу цветовой гаммы, поэтому ничего страшного, что новые цвета будут "несовместимы" со старыми нет", которые в общем-то обесценивали то, что я написал ранее.

Моя личная гипотеза, которая НЕ основывается ни на каких известных мне фактах, заключается в том, что компания LEGO была вынуждена сменить добавляемые красители для перечисленных цветов, потому что, например, старые оказались очень дорогими, или, что более вероятно, они содержали что-то такое, что раньше было разрешено, а потом, согласно новым, более жестоким законам (в Европе или США) оказалось вне закона. При этом открыто признаться в этом они не могут - фактически это сказать, что раньше компания выпускала кубики, которые сейчас запрещены, это большой удар по имиджу "безопасного и надёжного" производителя детских игрушек. Адекватной замены красителю(-ям) не нашлось, вот их и поменяли.

LEGO features a wide array of attractive pastel colours, applicable to anything from bricks to minifigures.

The original palette included colours such as bright red, bright blue, bright yellow, dark green, white, and black. Today, LEGO offers a much wider range.

List of colours

Solid colours

Transparent colours

Colour ID	Name	Sample
40	Transparent (clear)
41	Transparent Red
42	Transparent Light Blue
43	Transparent Blue
44	Transparent Yellow
47	Transparent Fluorescent Reddish-Orange (Transparent Dark Orange)
48	Transparent Green
49	Transparent Fluorescent Green (Transparent Neon Green)
111	Transparent Brown (Smoke)
113	Transparent Medium Reddish-Violet
126	Transparent Bright Bluish-Violet
143	Transparent Fluorescent Blue
182	Transparent Bright Orange
311	Transparent Bright Green

Special colours

Colour ID	Name	Sample
131	Silver
148	Metallic Dark Grey
294	Phosphorescent Green
297	Warm Gold
309	Metalized Silver
310	Metalized Gold
315	Silver Metallic
316	Titanium Metallic

Incomplete list of phased out colours

colour ID	Name	Sample
2	Grey
153	Sand Red
25	Earth Orange
139	Copper
219	Brown
105	Bright Yellowish Orange
3	Light Yellow
195	Royal Blue
11	Pastel Blue
27	Dark Grey
9	Light Reddish Violet
147	Metallic Sand Yellow
145	Metallic Sand Blue
50	Phosphorescent White
136	Sand Violet
104	Bright Violet

Greyscale

Before 2003, the greyscale colours of the LEGO Palette were entirely grey. After 2004, LEGO added a noticeably blue tint to their greys.

LEGO Digital Designer colour palette

As of version 4.3, LEGO Digital Designer currently has a palette of 41 solid colours, 15 transparent colours (including Phosphorescent Green), 5 metallic colours, and 17 legacy colours.

Earlier versions

Earlier versions had 26 main colours, some of which were divided into sections for easier colour reach. In LDD 4.1.6, the colours were reduced to 52, out of the 121 originally available.

The main colour groupings were White, Bright Red, Reddish Brown, Bright Orange, Bright Yellow, Dark Green, Bright Bluish Green, Bright Blue, Bright Reddish Violet, Medium Reddish Violet, Metallic White, Metallic Bright Red, Reddish Gold, Gold, Lemon Metallic, Metallic Bright Blue, Transparent, Transparent Red, Transparent Brown, Transparent Bright Orange, Transparent Yellow, Transparent Green, Transparent Blue, Transparent Bright Bluish Violet, and Transparent Medium Reddish Violet.

There were ten colours under this main colour including Phosphorescent White †, White, Light Stone Grey, Light Grey †, Grey †, Medium Stone Grey, Dark Stone Grey, Dark Grey †, PC Black IR †, and Black.

There were ten colours under this main colour including New Dark Red, Rust †, Flip/Flop Red †, Sand Red †, Bright Red, Bright Reddish Orange †, Flame Reddish Orange †, Neon Orange †, Medium Red †, and Light Red †.

Reddish Brown

There were 13 colours under this main colour including Dark Brown, Earth Orange †, Reddish Brown, Earth Yellow †, Brown †, Sand Yellow †, Brick-Yellow, Dark Orange, Yellow Flip/flop †, Nougat, Dark Curry †, Medium Nougat †, and Dark Nougat †.

Bright Orange

There were nine colours under this main colour including Light Orange †, Warm Yellowish orange †, flame yellowish orange †, Medium Yellowish Orange †, Bright Yellowish Orange †, Bright Orange, Light Orange Brown †, Medium Orange †, and Curry †.

Bright Yellow

There were seven colours under this main colour including Light Brick Yellow †, Light Yellowish Orange †, Light Nougat, Bright Yellow, Fire Yellow †, Light Yellow †, and Cool Yellow †.

There were 13 colours under this main colour including Dark Green †, Sand Green †, Faded Green †, Earth Green †, Bright Green, Light Faded Green †, Medium Green †, Light Green †, Bright Yellowish-Green, Medium-Yellowish green †, Neon Green †, Spring Yellowish Green †, and Light Yellowish Green †.

Bright Bluish Green

There were four colours under this main colour including Medium Bluish Green †, Bright Bluish Green †, Turquoise †, and Light Bluish Green †.

Bright Blue

There were 16 colours under this main colour including Medium Bluish Violet, Medium Blue, Sand Blue †, Medium Royal Blue †, Tiny-Medium Blue †, Royal Blue †, Tiny-Blue †, Bright Blue, Light Bluish Violet †, Dark Royal Blue †, Dove Blue †, Bright Bluish Violet †, Light Blue †, Earth Blue, Light Royal Blue †, and Aqua †.

Bright Reddish Violet

There were nine colours under this main colour including Bright Lilac †, Medium Lilac †, Lilac †, Reddish Lilac †, Bright Reddish Lilac †, Bright Reddish Violet †, Light Lilac †, Bright Violet †, and Sand Violet †.

Medium Reddish Violet

There were six colours under this main colour including Medium Reddish Violet †, Bright Purple †, Light Purple †, Light Reddish Violet †, and Light Pink †.

Metallic White

There were 11 colours under this main colour including Metallic Sand Violet †, Metallic White †, Metallic Light Grey †, Silver Metallic †, Gun Metallic †, Titanium Metallic †, Metallic Dark Grey †, Metallic Black †, Silver †, Cool silver †, and Silver flip/flop †.

Reddish Gold

There were four colours under this main colour including Metallic Earth-Orange †, Copper †, Reddish Gold †, and Metallic Sand Yellow †.

Lemon Metallic

There were two colours under this main colour including Lemon Metallic †, and Metallic Dark Green †.

Metallic Bright Blue

There were two colours under this main colour including Metallic Bright Blue †, and Metallic Sand Blue †.

Transparent

There were three colours under this main colour including Transparent, Nature †, and Phosphorescent Green.

In recent years, The LEGO color palette has exploded from the classic Red/Yellow/Blue colors that we are familiar with. This expanded color palette somehow feels both limiting and expansive at the same time — let’s find out if there’s a method to the madness…

By Tom Alphin, author of The LEGO Architect, a book that explores how to build 7 styles of architecture using LEGO.

50 years ago, LEGO builders were limited to just 7 colors: White, Gray, Black, Red, Blue, Yellow, and occasionally Green. By the early 1980’s there were 16 colors, and by the late 1990’s grew to around the same number we have today. The 39 colors haven’t changed much since 2005 – That’s the year that LEGO made several changes to the color palette (including the shift from a yellowish gray to the current bluish gray, more on that below…)

Official 2016 LEGO Color Palette includes 39 solid colors, 3 metallic colors, 1 glowing color, and 14 translucent colors.

Before we can understand the strengths and weaknesses of the LEGO color palette, it’s useful to understand how color works. You may recall that there are three “primary” colors of light: red, green, and blue. Your computer can create any color by mixing those three colors; when mixed in equal parts they create white light. This is why colors on your computer are often described as “RGB”, short for red, green, blue.

LEGO bricks are not made of light; they are made of plastic. Pigments are mixed in the right proportions to ensure that every LEGO brick is the right color. The color you see when looking at a LEGO brick is the color reflected by the plastic brick when a white light is pointed at it.

The reflected light is distributed across the visible spectrum, and the cones in our eyes (or the sensors in your camera) detect the light to determine the color which we seen. While digital cameras and computers describe colors using “RGB” values, we will use an easier to understand system called “HSL” (Hue, Saturation and Luminance) to explore the LEGO color palette.

“Hue” is often used to mean color. Some common LEGO colors are shown in the line below the complete spectrum.

The difference between a vibrant red, yellow, green or blue is what people think of when they say “color”, but the underlying difference is that these colors have a different “hue”. (Hue is closely related to the frequency of visible light that we see.)

Blue LEGO Colors organized from least saturation to most saturation.

“Saturation” describes how pure a color is. Vibrant colors have a high “saturation. Grayish colors like “Sand Blue” have a low saturation. A pure white, black, or a neutral gray has no saturation at all.

Saturated blue hues of LEGO organized by Luminance.

“Luminance” approximates the shade of gray you would see if you removed the saturation. For saturated colors, a high luminance results in a “pastel” or “light” color, medium luminance results in a “bright” color, and a low luminance results in a “dark” color.

It is worth noting that the LEGO “Black” is not a true black, but rather a very dark gray, and LEGO “White” is actually a light orangeish gray.

Organizing the LEGO Palette

By photographing every common LEGO color under controlled conditions, and calibrating the resulting photo using a neutral gray card, I extracted the RGB color for each brick, and converted those colors to HSL. This allows us to see the distribution of LEGO colors on various dimensions.

2016 LEGO color palette plotted by Saturation vs. Luminance.

By graphing each color in the LEGO color palette by saturation vs. luminance, you will see some logical groupings of the various colors. It also helps explain some of the differences between the names LEGO enthusiasts use to describe colors, and the official The LEGO Group names for each color:

Bright – LEGO consistently labels many common colors as “Bright Red” or “Bright Blue” that most LEGO enthusiasts describe simply as Red or Blue. Bright colors have almost 100% saturation and around 50% luminance.
Light – There are a number of colors with high luminance (around 90%) such as: Light Flesh (Light Nougat), Bright Light Blue (Light Royal Blue), Bright Light Yellow (Cool Yellow), Yellowish Green, Tan (Brick Yellow), and Light Aqua (Aqua). The naming isn’t very consistent, but “light” is the most common description.
Dark / Earth – We also have a variety of dark colors with around 25% luminance including: Dark Green (Earth Green), and Dark Blue (Earth Blue) which both have high saturation, as well as Dark Brown which has low saturation.
Sand – Colors such as Sand Green, Sand Blue, and Dark Tan (Sand Yellow) are very useful to LEGO builders even though they aren’t very common. Sand colors have around 50% luminance and below 50% saturation.
White, Light Bluish Gray (Light Stone Gray), Dark Bluish Gray (Dark Stone Gray), and Black have very low saturation, and around 100%, 85%, 50% and 0% luminance respectively. If these colors had 0% saturation, they would be true neutral gray colors. They aren’t quite neutral, which is why we call the current colors “bluish gray” instead of just “gray”.

2016 LEGO color palette plotted by Hue vs. Luminance.

When we graph the colors in the LEGO color palette by hue vs. luminance, you can see that some hue values offer a lot of different colors, and other hue values such as pink, purple, green and red hues offer more limited selection.

Colors with an “orange” hue organized by Saturation vs. Luminance.

We find that there are a lot of colors available in the narrow range of orange hues. The selection is enhanced by the around 60% saturation Flesh, Light Flesh and Dark Flesh tones, even though those colors aren’t very common in basic bricks. LEGO also offers a good selection in the low-saturation range as well, such as Tan, Dark Tan, and Brown.

“Blue” hues organized by Saturation vs. Luminance.

Blue offers evenly distributed options ranging in luminance from Bright Light Blue (Light Royal Blue) all the way to Dark Blue (Earth Blue). Further, Sand Blue is one of the few low saturation colors in the LEGO color palette

Potential improvements

39 different colors is less than the original Nintendo NES video gaming console (which had 54 different colors), and a lot less than our modern devices that can display a nearly unlimited range of colors.

The natural desire to improve the color palette is to add dozens of new colors to fill in the existing gaps. An easy way to do this in an evenly distributed way would be to pick relevant hue values, and ensure that each hue offers a light, medium, bright, dark, and sand option. Unfortunately, it is safe to assume that the LEGO Group wants to maintain a small number of colors to reduce inventory and costs.

One way to improve the LEGO palette is by making the existing colors more consistent. Related colors would be shifted to have exactly the same hue despite different luminance and saturation values. It would be easier to build realistic models if you had a full range of colors from light to dark, as well as both bright and sand colors for each hue.

Another potential improvement is to use the same saturation/luminance values for colors with the same description. For example, all “bright” colors could have 100% saturation / 50% luminance, “light” colors could have 75% saturation / 90% luminance, and “sand” colors could have 25% saturation / 50% luminance.

One practical approach would be to remove a few colors that are very similar (such as tan vs. light flesh) and add options in other areas. For example, you could pick a small number of primary hues such as Red, Yellow/Tan, Orange/Flesh, Blue, and Green. These colors would have a full range Light, Medium, Bright, Dark, and Sand options. Secondary colors such as Pink, Purple, Lime, and Turquoise would remain, but would only be offered in a Bright and Light option. This would result in 25 primary colors, 8 secondary colors, white, light & dark gray, and black for a total of 37 colors, leaving room for special exceptions like Brown, which is an important color that doesn’t fit into the pattern.

To be clear, even a thoughtful change to the LEGO color palette is probably a bad idea. The LEGO Group learned a hard lesson in 2005 when they angered adult LEGO fans by changing from a yellowish gray to a bluish gray. That said, if they do decide to introduce more colors in the future, maybe they will be thoughtful about more closely matching the hues of other existing colors.

Side Note – Gray vs. Bley

In 2005 the LEGO Group made a number of cost cutting changes as part of their efforts to regain profitability. One of the changes was to retire many colors, and tweak a few of the colors to make the color palette more consistent and to address feedback from customers. One of the discoveries was that the old “Gray” and “Dark Gray” colors were not well liked by parents and kids as they have a subtle yellowish tint that appears dirty. Rather than shift to a completely neutral gray, they chose a slightly Bluish gray and “Bley” was born.

I created a couple images showing the differences between Old Gray and New Bluish Gray, to help explain these changes.

Hue vs. Luminance with Old and New Gray.

This illustration shows what makes Bluish Gray “blue” and why Old Gray is yellowish. It’s all in those small percentages of saturation. At 0% saturation, there is no color at all, so Hue no longer matters, but even at a value as small as 2-7%, the underlying hue shows through. The old gray colors have a hue near Yellow/Brown, and the new gray colors are near Blue on the Hue spectrum.

Hue vs. Saturation for Old and New Gray.

To state my bias outright, I would prefer if the White, Black and Grey colors in the LEGO color palette were completely neutral tones (having 0% saturation). Based on this goal alone, New gray is “worse” than old gray: (New) Light Bluish gray is 7% saturation while (Old) Light Gray was just 2%. (New) Dark bluish gray is also 7%, whereas (old) Dark Gray was 5% saturation.

The Changing Palette of LEGO: 1975-2014 (The Brothers Brick) – This article shows the changing distribution of colors from 1975 – 2014. There are a lot more colors today, but most striking is the huge percentage of LEGO elements which are Black, Light Bluish Gray, Dark Bluish Gray, and White (in that order). Those four colors alone amount to more than 50% of LEGO bricks produced.

LEGO® Colour Chart Reference – A brief history of the LEGO palette, including discussion of the huge number of colors used in the early 2000’s, followed by the consolidation to the current palette around 2005.

You may also enjoy these resources from LEGO Color archivist Ryan Howerter:

– A great resource for translating between Official LEGO Color Names, ID’s, and more commonly used color names from BrickLink. – A photo gallery showing carefully captured photos of every known color. – a huge chart showing the year each color was introduced and retired.

What do you think about the LEGO Color Palette? Does it make you crazy? Does it meet your needs? Let me know what you think about this article by leaving a comment below…

10 Responses

Absolutely fascinating article. I have recently become intrigued with the LEGO color names and palette, this was the perfect starting point. Thank you for all the work and visuals paired with the easy to understand explanations. The LEGO names make more sense now, even if I still prefer their more common BrickLink names in most cases.

The biggest surprise for me was just how big the difference in hue was between the old and new grays.

Tom Alphin says:

Most AFOLs prefer the BrickLink names, which are anywhere from identical to the official LEGO naming, to significantly less confusing. (P.S. Brick Yellow makes a bit more sense in Denmark – their homes really are built out of weird tan bricks.)

The transition from the yellowish greys to the bluish greys actually occurred (or at least began) in Q1 2004, including (but probably not limited to) the first wave of the 2004 Bionicle lineup.

What did you use for your HSL data source? Your values for the different grays seems more accurate than what I have found online elsewhere.

As an example: Ryan Howerter’s hex code for Old Light Gray is 8A928D which is HSL 143, 4%, 56%. This seems too green and too dark. Other sites list Old Light Gray as Pantone 422 C with a hex code of 9EA2A2 which is HSL 180, 2%, 63%. This is way too blue and still too dark.

Your HSL values for Old Light Gray of 60, 2%, ~80% seem much more true to life. This has me hope that the rest of your data is just as good. Would you be willing to post your color data set?

Tom Alphin says:

I extracted colors from a photograph that I took, which was then calibrated to neutral gray using a gray card. At the time, I did not have a more advanced color profiling system, but I now own an x-rite Color Checker Passport, and at some point in the future I plan to photograph the same selection of bricks using multiple cameras, all corrected using the gray card and custom profiles, and then finally averaging the RGB / HSL values.

The biggest challenge which will crop up next is that sRGB is too limited to reproduce many official LEGO colors.

Brilliant article, great work!

I have an x-rite Color Checker Passport as well, frankly, I hadn’t thought of using that to check the brick colors from a photo. I was searching for the values of Bley to paint a tabletop. I also like your idea of averaging out the cameras/photos.

Great site by the way!

Thank you! Your information was very helpful in understanding the color palette and why the colors are named as they are. Like Jeremy, I thought my gray bricks had yellowed with age!

I have Lego bricks from the early days (about 1960) to new. The color changes are most apparent in Red. The “basic” Red ranges from a really bright color to rather dull. I also have some bricks that have discolored over the years. The colors were not identical from the early days to the 1970s in Red. White seems to discolor the most over time, old blue bricks from when I was a kid in the late 1960s seems totally stable, there was a brief time when Yellow was slightly translucent it was so bright in color and the clear bricks from the 1960s are often really dull. Just some earlier time input.
I realize this is just practical info, not directly adding to your color palette information but I hoped it would be useful.

What a fun and informative read. Thanks!

I have sets from ~1982 (when I was just a young boy with my first Legos!) all the way to present day. And here I thought the yellowing gray bricks I owned were due to discoloration over time… ha! (Although, to be fair, yes, I’m sure there has been some discoloration over time since other older bricks in white, yellow, and red have all yellowed somewhat.)

I appreciated the hue/saturation/luminance breakdown in X-Y graphical format though – very very helpful.

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Hi guys! I'm really new to Legos myself, but my boyfriend loves them. I edited a picture of his beloved kitty, and then with the aid of PicToBrick I made it into something I could turn into a Lego mosaic for his birthday. This subreddit showed me BrickLink, whose color names matched up nicely with PicToBrick's (but not with Lego's official names?). However, there aren't ANY "very light bluish grey" bricks. Anywhere. Ever. I found out that they're the same as Lego's "Light Stone Grey" bricks, but I couldn't find those anywhere either. Like I said earlier though, I'm really new to Lego, so maybe I'm just not looking in the right places?

So I considered going with different colors. This mural uses three grays: Dark Bluish Gray, Light Bluish Gray, and Very Light Bluish Gray. I figured I would just go with a dark, medium, and light gray that BrickLink has to offer. But I'm not sure if it would skew the mural since I'd have to make the grays a bit darker? "Light Bluish Gray" seems to be the lightest gray. I'd use that in place of "Very Light Bluish Gray", even though the lightest is supposed to be lighter. Then I'd use "Light Gray" in place of "Light Bluish Gray" in the mural, and then keep "Dark Bluish Gray" where it's supposed to be. Do you guys think that would work? Or should I move "Dark Bluish Gray" down the spectrum a bit and replace it with "Dark Gray," which appears to be a darker gray?

I just want this to look good. I'm already worried about it as it is.

I have a lot of experience designing and building LEGO mosaics, and also run a workshop at LEGO conventions teaching others how to do it. (If you're ever at Brickworld as a full registrant, not just weekend attendee, you can sit in)

There are a few things you need to know right off the bat. First off, I don't like PicToBrick. It's well designed, and it makes the basic process of mosaic design easy, but I find the lack of fine control a major problem. I prefer to use a program called "GIMP," which is a general purpose photo editing tool, like photoshop (you can use that too) but GIMP is free. I'll get back to how I use it in a moment.

The next thing to know is that PicToBrick has all the LEGO colors, and many of those do not exist in 1x1 plates, bricks, or tiles (but they have been used for other pieces). Very Light Bluish Grey, for instance has been used in the NXT (robot kit) and a few others, but never basic elements. The closest match is Very Light Grey, which was made in 1x1 plates for the mosaic sets LEGO made in 2003. All of the "bluish grey" color names came up when LEGO changed their manufacturing process in 2004, and some of the colors shifted. The other notable examples are "Brown" became "Reddish Brown" and "Pink" became "Bright Pink"

The best thing to do though, rather than trying to pick a close color to your final design, is to restrict the colors the program uses to what are actually available, and affordable. (some colors exist, but are very rare and expensive) Start by picking the size basic element you want to use (1x1 brick or tile), and go to the bricklink catalog page for that element to see what colors you can get.

Now, if you order parts from LEGO direct and bricklink, the color names do not all line up. This is particularly confusing when the same name refers to different colors "Dark Green" according to LEGO is regular "Green" according to bricklink, and "Dark Green" according to bricklink is "Earth Green" according to LEGO. here's a list of all the color names matched up for reference. (Rebrickable uses the same names as Bricklink, the "Bricklink Color" column in that chart gives the number bricklink uses)

One of the reasons I recommend GIMP over PicToBrick is the extra control you get (though it is harder to use). LEGO colors are very bright, and most photos people take (your's included) use more subdued tones, so they don't match up that well. You can easily fix this by increasing the contrast ratio (in GIMP menu: Colors ->Brightness/Contrast -> move sliders around until it looks right.) It's good to try it out one way, go back, change the contrast, brightness, color balance, by a little amount, re-generate the mosaic, and see if it looks better. Depending on how fast you work, you're likely to spend an hour to two hours just building a 32x32 mosaic, and 2-5 hours building a 48x48 mosaic, so don't rush your design on the computer.

Now at this point, you could go back and forth between GIMP and PicToBrick to generate the final mosaic, but you can also do the whole thing in GIMP, and save yourself a hassle.

To generate the mosaic in GIMP, you will need to create a digital palette of LEGO colors. This is done in Windows-> Dockable Dialogs -> Palettes. Create a new palette, add colors you are using one at a time from the chart above using the RGB hex code, e.g. 91A09 for "Red". Once you have a palette, creating a mosaic (and any future mosaic is easy. Just scale down the image to the desired number of LEGO pixels (note, GIMP will want to maintain aspect ratio, so crop a square first if that is what you want), then convert to LEGO colors by going to "Image -> Mode -> Indexed" select the option for a palette, and select the palette you created from the drop down list, and apply. There are a several different algorithms GIMP gives you for reducing to the LEGO colors (just like PicToBrick) the best option depends on your image, so try them all. (This is done in another drop-down menu when you index the image, before you hit apply.)

with BrickLink & TLG names , a visual catalogue - also including additional rarities showing years of production for all known LEGO colors

There are always more LEGO colors than you expect.

With the help of a few other AFOLs, I’ve been attempting to catalogue every color that LEGO has produced. I’m not the first to do this (see Peeron, Isodomos, BrickLink, Brickset, LDraw…), but in combining the existing lists and frequent updates I hope to have a reference for the AFOL community that is as complete as possible.

One aim is to help buyers and sellers on BrickLink better identify part colors. I don’t know how many notifications I’ve gotten for 2x4 bricks listed as Light Blue that turn out to be Medium Blue (a much more common color). It’s nice to have a single reference to show people when the question “What is this color?” comes up. I prefer to use TLG’s ID system, since it is the most complete/authoritative. BrickLink, BrickOwl, and Peeron all seem to conflate certain colors, in an effort to be more buyer/seller friendly.

The main color list links to individual photos of each color, on my “Brick Colorstream” page. I’ve tried to keep the lighting/editing consistent, since it’s difficult to compare physical bricks with colors on a monitor. The photos are sorted by TLG’s color ID, with unnumbered/unidentified colors at the end.

For me, this project is an interesting look at the history of LEGO. When most people think of LEGO, they tend to think of the original basic colors: red, blue, yellow, green, and maybe white and black. In the early '50s, though, the first LEGO bricks came in many bright colors, with innumerable variations in shade and hue:

Once the slots disappeared, so did the wild colors, and it was mostly primary colors/grayscale for a while. In 1980, the Fabuland theme introduced many browns and tans, most of which are still around today. Starting around the mid-90s, TLG rapidly expanded their color palette, to a point where there were some 100+ different colors in active production. There were single-use colors, only used in one part in one short-run Duplo set. Slight variations of blues and transparent colors were treated as separate colors (Clikits!). At the same time, the number of different active parts was getting ridiculously large, and LEGO was headed for bankruptcy.

Between 2003 and 2005, TLG switched out several colors for brighter, more saturated versions that kids seemed to prefer in focus groups. 2 Grey / Light Gray, which had a bit of a yellowish tint and tended to age poorly, was replaced by the bluer 194 Medium Stone Grey / Light Bluish Gray. 27 Dark Grey / Dark Gray became 199 Dark Stone Grey / Dark Bluish Gray. These changes alone sparked an uproar among AFOLs, but that seems to have died down now. Several less-apparent replacements happened at the same time:

Around 2005, TLG condensed its bloated offerings, reducing its colors and parts by about half. In the early 2010s, TLG has added a few new colors to the palette, but these are much less redundant and more widely-used than colors from the early 2000s.

Click image to view a zoomable version of Ryan's LEGO Color Timeline showing years of production for all known colors.

Cataloguing these colors is an ongoing process, one that may never be complete. Just this month, WoutR (from BrickLink) found some old brown colors that were used before what BrickLink calls Brown (“old brown”, 25 Earth Orange) came into the picture. This was probably before TLG started numbering their colors. It’s surprising how many new-found colors came from parts we already had, but didn’t think anything of until we actually compared them.

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