Braking at a red stop sign, appreciating brilliant yellow flowers in the yard or a bright blue sky on a spring day—adults use color recognition in daily life without even thinking about it. Although your baby sees all these colors, learning to identify and name them correctly comes much later. So if your toddler points at a green hat and proudly pronounces it “red,” it’s because understanding color is a surprisingly complex learning process.

In this article:

• When do children learn colors?
• Why is it important for children to learn colors?
• How do children learn colors?
• How to make teaching colors easier
• Activities for teaching your toddler colors
• Toys and playthings for color learning 
• Developmental concerns with color learning

When do children learn colors?

Your child may be able to consistently and accurately identify colors sometime between the ages of 3 and 4. But children have a receptive understanding of color from an early age. Research suggests that babies may be able to distinguish between colors as early as 4 months. Your baby can perceive that objects come in different colors, and as early as 12 months, they may even show a preference for certain colors.

By 18 to 24 months, your toddler may be able to respond correctly if you ask them to hand you a blue ball. By age 3 to 4, they may be able to identify and name the color of an object correctly most of the time, and they may understand that color is just one attribute—like shape, size, or weight—that an object can have.

Why is it important for children to learn colors?

Helping your child learn colors helps create a strong foundation for later STEM skills like matching, sorting, and creating patterns. Your child’s ability to see detailed differences between items, which development experts call visual discrimination, is an important skill that’s partly based on color recognition. Your toddler’s visual discrimination skills will help them later as they learn to distinguish different letters and ultimately, learn to read.

How do children learn colors?

An apple is red, the grass is green and the sun is yellow: It seems as though your child should be able to learn color basics with just a few repetitions, right? But for most young children, learning colors takes time. Knowing that an apple is red means that your child’s brain has to figure out that the word “apple” is referring to the item and that the word “red” is describing the attribute of color. For young children, this is a complex cognitive task. 

Like many aspects of your child’s development, learning colors happens gradually. As their brain grasps increasingly complex concepts and as they are exposed to different experiences, their understanding of color grows. Here’s a rough timeline of how children’s understanding of color progresses: 

Notice different colors (12 to 18 months): Your one-year-old may choose a green ball from a basket full of colored balls, or prefer to drink from a blue cup rather than a red one. This shows that your toddler is learning to visually discriminate between different colors and even indicate their color preferences.

Begin to learn words for colors (19 to 24 months): As your toddler’s language skills grow, they may begin to use color words in conversation. When asked “What color is it?” your toddler may respond with a color term, though it may not be the correct one. They may hold a ball that is yellow and say “blue.” 🙃

Correctly identify at least one color when asked (by about 30 months): At this stage, your toddler may point to the right cup if asked, “Where is the red cup?” But if you ask your child, “What color is this ball?” they may say the wrong color word. While this may seem puzzling, it’s an indication that they understand color words before they can accurately come up with them on their own. This is because receptive language skills (what we can understand) often develop before expressive language skills (what we can say).

Match by color (24 to 36 months): As your toddler’s understanding of color develops, they may start to be interested in matching colored objects. Try giving your toddler a yellow Felt Star and then offering them one green and one yellow Mosaic Button. Ask: “Which button goes with your star?” to see if they can match yellow with yellow.

Correctly identify a few colors by name (36 to 48 months): Around age 3 to 4, your child may learn to separate the attribute of color from the object itself. Objects can have different colors, even if their function is the same. This is when your child may begin to name colors with more accuracy. Their brain is able to put all the pieces of color understanding together. They have the language skills to say color names as well as the cognitive maturity to link that word to the correct color on an object.

It’s helpful to keep in mind that your child may not learn all the basic colors at the same time. It may take several months for them to consistently and correctly label all the primary colors, and research suggests that children may learn the colors brown and gray last. 

How to make teaching colors easier

For young children, learning about colors is all about exploration, exposure, and play. You can support your child’s understanding by simply pointing out colors in interesting and meaningful ways. 

Notice and name colors. Point out when you are wearing the same color, or when a flower or a car or a plaything has a particularly striking color: “Look! I have green on my shirt and you have green on your shoes,” or “Look at the lovely flower. It has such a bright red color.” By expressing a sense of wonder and excitement about the colors you see around you, you help your child notice colors too. “Look at that slide on the playground: It’s such a bright yellow!”

Name the object, then the color. It’s common to introduce color by saying “look at the purple crayon,” or “that’s a red apple.” But research has found that reversing the order—“the crayon is purple” or “this apple is red”—makes a significant difference in a toddler’s ability to identify colors.   

As you speak, your child processes your words in order. So when you draw attention to the crayon before labeling it as purple, your toddler is better able to understand that “purple” refers to an attribute of the crayon and not the other way around. This is why your child may learn colors easier if you say the color word after the object: “This crayon is purple.”

Activities for teaching your toddler colors 

You can support your toddler’s color understanding through everyday play. Help them notice objects of different colors and give them the words for those colors as you go through your daily routine, or try some of the activities below. 

Read a colorful book: Pick a book with realistic photos, like “Colorful Foods” from The Babbler Play Kit Book Bundle. Point to the objects and name the colors as you read together: “That boy is eating a strawberry. The strawberry is red. The boy’s shirt is also red.” 

Popsicle stick color pockets (starting around 15 months): You can introduce this activity around 15 months as a fine motor skill challenge that grows with your child to become a color matching game. At first, the focus is on grasping a craft stick and maneuvering it into a pocket, without matching the stick to the “right” pocket by color. As your child learns more about colors, you can hand your child a green craft stick and say, “This stick is green. Can you put it in the pocket that is green?

Compare colors at the store (starting around 18 months): The grocery store is a perfect place to help your child discover a range of interesting colors: “This apple is red and that pepper is also red. Two foods that are red!” As your child’s color learning progresses, ask them to point out foods of different colors: “Can you find a food that is yellow?” 

Create a color box (around 22 months): Once your child has picked up a few color words and can distinguish between colors, you can introduce a color box activity. Fill a small box or bin with objects that are all the same color—a lemon, a yellow cup, and a yellow ball, for example. Then add some playthings: the star and basket from the Transfer Tweezers & Felt Stars, the piece from the Chunky Wooden Puzzle, and a peg from the Wooden Posting Stand. Place the bin on the floor so your toddler can explore on their own at first. After a few minutes, talk to them about the objects and their colors: “This star is yellow. Will the star fit in the cup that is yellow?” 

Go on a color hunt (around 22 months): Take your toddler on an outdoor color scavenger hunt. As you explore nature, work together to find different colored objects. You can take the lead in discovering all the green objects at the park and pointing them out to your child. Colors in nature often come in a wide range of hues and shades, too: point out all the varieties of colors to help your child notice the dark green of a pine tree and the light green of a grasshopper. As your child’s understanding of color develops, you can encourage them to take the lead in finding particular colors: “Can you find a flower that is yellow?”

RELATED: 4 activities that expose your toddler to the wonder of colors

Pinch, peel, and press to match colors (starting around 24 months): Playing with stickers can support your child’s developing fine motor skills while helping them with color identification. Matching colored stickers to paper is a simple way to boost your toddler’s color knowledge, vocabulary, and matching skills. All you need are dot stickers in primary colors and construction paper in colors to match the stickers. Start by choosing two contrasting colors—for example, red and yellow—and using tape to secure a sheet of each color to a table or wall. Next, show your toddler how you peel a sticker off the backing, and how to place the sticker on the matching-color paper. Name each material and its color—for example, “This sticker is red,” and “This paper is red.” Point to the sticker then the paper and repeat “red.” Pause to allow your child time to respond, then invite them to try. 

Toys and playthings for color learning 

Research shows that young children tend to prefer bright colors. Offering playthings in vivid hues may attract your child’s attention and reinforce color recognition as they play. These playthings from the Lovevery Play Kits are bright, beautiful, durable, and designed to support color learning at each stage of development.

Wooden Stacking Pegboard from The Adventurer Play Kit for 16 to 18 months: Sort and stack some pegs by color, then watch to see which pegs your toddler adds next. If they add a color that doesn’t match yours, describe what they did instead of correcting them: “You put a peg that is green on top of the peg that is blue.” Learning colors takes time and practice, and at 16 to 18 months, your toddler probably won’t be able to match the colors each time. This simple activity can help your toddler learn to distinguish between the object itself (the peg) and its  color.

Drop & Match Dot Catcher from The Helper Play Kit for 25 to 30 months: This plaything is designed to help your child practice color identification and lay the foundations of matching. First, let your child drop the dots into the board however they want, and identify the colors of each dot. Then try grouping the dots into color stacks and identify them: “These dots are all red.” Create a column of all red dots bottom to top in the red-ringed slots, and see if your child wants to create the next colored column next to yours. Next, try making a row left to right, naming the color as you drop each dot, and ask your child to create the next row.

Once they get the hang of matching the colored dots to the same-color slots, try sneaking a blue dot into your red stack of dots to see if your child spots the error. When they discover the “odd one out” in the stack, ask if that one should go in a different slot. Let your toddler work through the thought process on their own as much as possible, then encourage them to drop it in the blue slot. 

RELATED: Obsessed with color-matching right now? Try these activities

Color Theory Puzzle from The Analyst Play Kit for 46 to 48 months: When your child has a basic knowledge of colors and is able to label them correctly, you can help them understand how each color can have a variety of hues or degrees of brightness. The Color Theory Puzzle explores color gradation: the idea that colors come in a variety of different shades. Instead of fitting together like a traditional jigsaw puzzle, your child has to color match to figure out how to complete it, for example by fitting the dark, medium, and light blue pieces together. 

One way to play with it is to explore the different colors. Name them with your child and talk about the rainbow order of colors. You can even begin to teach your child about primary (red, blue, yellow), secondary (orange, violet, green), and tertiary (reddish-orange, yellowish-orange, yellowish-green, blueish-green) colors. You can also ask your child about how different colors make them feel.

Developmental concerns with color learning

Learning to identify and label colors is a gradual process that involves both cognitive and language skills. If your child isn’t identifying at least a few primary colors by around age 4, discuss your concerns with your pediatrician. They can assess your child’s development and answer any questions.

How to tell if your child is color blind

Color blindness is a condition that can affect a child’s ability to distinguish colors. Although complete color blindness is rare, some people experience the inability to distinguish between colors—most commonly red and green. Others are unable to distinguish yellow from blue. Worldwide, the prevalence of color blindness varies by ethnicity and sex. Among men, the prevalence of color blindness is about 4-8%, and around 0.4-4% for women. 

Although testing children for color blindness can be challenging since learning colors is a gradual developmental process, some research has shown that children can be tested as young as age 4. If you have any concerns that your child cannot distinguish colors, discuss it with your pediatrician and they can determine whether further testing is needed.