Colour in natural stone is written by minerals. Iron oxides create the reds, pinks and terracottas of Rojo Alicante and Rosa Travertine. Bitumen gives Nero Marquina its depth. Green comes from minerals such as serpentine, and the purest whites come from almost pure crystalline calcite, the reason Carrara and Thassos seem to hold the light.

People have prized coloured stone for as long as they have built. The Romans brought coloured marbles to Rome from across their empire: red from Greece, yellow from North Africa, green from Thessaly and imperial purple porphyry from Egypt. They set them into floors and walls in geometric patterns that announced wealth and reach, and the floor of the Pantheon still shows them today. Natural stone mosaic is part of that same lineage: colour assembled, piece by piece, into pattern.

Language tells its own story. Linguists have found that languages tend to name colours in a similar order, beginning with dark and light, then red, then green and yellow, with words such as pink, orange and grey arriving much later. English follows the pattern: white, black and green are among its oldest colour words, while orange was borrowed from the name of a fruit and pink from a flower. Each of our colour pages traces that story, from the word to the stone.