Excluding translucent pieces, how many colours of official LEGO bricks are there?
4 Answers
The official LEGO color chart at Peeron has 111 colors listed. There are 14 listed as "transparent" (or "tr"), so - 97.
The Peeron guide also lists CMYK, RGB, HTML Hex Codes (displayed as the sample), and Pantone numbers for each.
The latest palette officially released by LEGO in 2010 has 51 colors in use, including 33 regular colors, 14 transparent, and 4 "effect" (silver, gold, metallic, phosphorescent).
Of course, as 81bronco points out, there have been a lot more, but these are the one LEGO was effectively using as of January 2010. In the few years before that, LEGO was busy rationalizing its palette of colors to eliminate seldom used colors as much as posible. Considering the downsize to 51, I don't think they've removed any more since.
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According to the 2010 Company Profile presentation (aboutus.lego.com/en-us/factsfigures/default.aspx) there are currently "58 different colours"! Oct 28, 2011 at 19:10
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1Weird. I wouldn't be surprised if they couldn't tell for sure themselves, though. And maybe the 7 missing ones are reserved colours (there's no Maersk blue in the chart, for example), or maybe they reintroduced some between the chart and the company profile.– JoubarcOct 28, 2011 at 19:42
This Flickr image from Brick Colorstream shows all the known colors of LEGO bricks, charted along a timeline of when they were available. According to that image, there was one new color in 2015, "Conductive Black".
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Here's an interview with the author of that image: newelementary.com/2015/03/lego-colour-chart-reference.html It's a fun read on how the flickr stream and image came to be. May 13, 2015 at 6:27
According to the LEGO customer service site which allows you to search by color family, there are 9 color families and 23 exact colors:
Color Family Exact Color
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Black BLACK
Blue BRIGHT BLUE
Blue EARTH BLUE
Blue MEDIUM BLUE
Blue TR. BLUE
Blue TR. LIGHT BLUE
Green BRIGHT GREEN
Green BRIGHT YELLOWISH GREEN
Green DARK GREEN
Green TR. FLUORE. GREEN
Green TR. GREEN
Grey DARK STONE GREY
Grey MEDIUM STONE GREY
Orange-brown BRIGHT ORANGE
Orange-brown DARK ORANGE
Orange-brown FLAME YELLOWISH ORANGE
Orange-brown REDDISH BROWN
Orange-brown TR. BROWN
Purple BRIGHT PURPLE
Purple MEDIUM LILAC
Red BRIGHT RED
Red NEW DARK RED
Red TR. FLUORE.REDD. ORANGE
Red TR. RED
White WHITE
Yellow BRICK YELLOW
Yellow BRIGHT YELLOW
Yellow SAND YELLOW
Yellow TR. YELLOW
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4Bear in mind however that some shades are considered "rare" or "exclusive" and aren't available through Pick-a-brick. Also, some shades aren't listed - search for Element ID 4505990 and you find a cup with an exact colour of "Warm Gold" Oct 25, 2011 at 21:10
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For anyone reading this answer from 2011 please note that the colours olive green, yellowish green, medium azure, medium lavender have since been added in 2012. And light aqua and lavender were added in 2011. bricklink.com/catalogColors.asp?v=0&itemType=P&itemNo= Jun 29, 2018 at 19:12