How to identify colors?

There are so many shades of colours - red has so many, blue has so many....... Is there any way how I can know which one is which? I can't tell which is burgundy, which one is lavender, which one is scarlet and so on. Someone please guide me.

For Burgandy think deep dark red wine..for lavender it is a soft shade of purple sometimes tinged toward pink. Scarlet is a deep red that is like fresh blood Since the human eye can detect more shades of green than any other color the names for them can be pretty far fetched. This is why color names used in descriptions can be deceptive. A "blue" name is often used for any flower that has even a slight bluish cast to it even though it is actually a shade of pink or magenta. And to confuse the issue even more we tend to each call colors by different names. I have a Geranium that is a magenta color. The nursery called it blue. My DH calls it a pink thingy, And my daughter calls it purple. So I am afraid I am at a loss as to how to help you! :)

Zany, Thanks for the info. Now I know how burgundy and magenta are. I'm sure there are other 7,301 people left to confuse me ;}

try this: http://www.tayloredmktg.com/rgb/

and this one, you pick the color, and the background will change. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/9801/colorcodes.html

tiG, thanks for the links - those are very interesting. Dinu, it's funny you raised this question.

I've been working with a list of all the colors we currently have in the database (it's rather lengthy, for sure!) and I'm trying to develop a drop-down list of standard colors. It's certainly a challenge to make a comprehensive list that addresses the various hues, while keeping it brief enough to be user-friendly (nobody wants to scroll down for five minutes to see all the choices!)

I read somewhere in my searching that the Royal Horticulture Society has a list of standard flower colors. Does anyone know if that is true? Or better yet, does anybody happen to have that list, and could share it with me?

My daughter worked as a floral assistant for awhile and she was telling me about official floral colors...that's all I remember, sorry. I'll ask her more about it next time I see her.

Thanks, Lantana! That would be great!!!

Many thanks tiG. I liked the second link better. Very useful.

I am so glad to see that you got some real help on this. Those links are very good. Now if we could just get the people at the nurseries to label the flowers according to the charts we might all be able to agree on what color my magenta/blue/pinkish geranium is! :)