You walk into the Sermoneta glove store on the Via Veneto in Rome and see a beautiful pair of gloves. You just have to have them. Chances are if they are beige (beige) you will have no trouble telling the sales clerk which gloves you want to try on. But what if they are yellow (giallo)? That may be a little more difficult to communicate.

Colors are adjectives and must agree with the nouns they are describing. For example, il rosso guanti means the red gloves.

To describe a color as light add the adjective chiaro to the color so rosso chiaro is light red. Adding scuro makes the color dark so blu scuro becomes dark blue.

When I travel to Italy the colors I use most are rosso and bianco as in vino rosso and vino bianco.

Here is the list of colors in Italian with their pronunciation: