Color

Color preferences are surprisingly personal and culturally influenced. These questions work well for building descriptive vocabulary and exploring how colors affect mood, fashion choices, and daily life.

Questions are organized by level from beginner to advanced. A printable PDF of all the questions is available at the bottom of the page.

Beginner (A1-A2)

1. What is your favorite color?
2. Is color important to you? How does it affect what you buy or wear?
3. If you HAD to change your hair color, what color would you change it to? Why that color?
4. If you bought a car, what color would it be? Why that color?
5. What color is your bedroom? Do you like it?
6. What colors do you see when you look around right now? What’s the most common color?
7. What colors are popular in your country? Give me some examples.
8. What colors do you wear the most? What are some good ones you have?
9. When you were a child, what was your favorite color? Is it still the same?
10. What color do you like for shoes? How many pairs do you have in that color?

Elementary (A2)

1. How does color affect your emotions?
2. Which colors do guys usually like more? How about girls?
3. Can you think of some examples of camouflage in daily life?
4. Do you like bright colors or dark colors? What’s good about each?
5. Have you ever painted a room in your home? Tell me about it.
6. What’s the worst color combination you’ve ever seen?
7. Have you ever bought something just because you liked the color? What was it?
8. What colors are considered lucky or unlucky in your culture? Why?
9. What color was your favorite toy when you were a child? Why did you like it so much?
10. Is there a color you used to hate but now like? What changed?
11. What colors do you associate with different seasons? Why do you think of those colors?
12. If you could repaint your entire city in any colors you wanted, what would you change?

Intermediate (B1)

1. Imagine being in a room where everything is dark blue how would you feel? What if the room was red? Black? Yellow? Pink?
2. Why do you think colors affect humans so much?
3. Do you think that certain colors are only for boys or only for girls? Why or why not?
4. Why do you think men and women often prefer different colors?
5. Most electronics are either black, silver or white. Why do you think this is? Do you think we will have more colorful electronics in the future?
6. Colorful tattoos are becoming more popular in places like America. Do you think they will become as popular in your country? Why or why not? Would you ever get a tattoo? Why or why not?
7. In many cultures, certain colors are associated with specific meanings or traditions. What are some examples from your country?
8. Do you prefer colorful clothes or neutral colors like black, white, and gray? Why?
9. Should schools require students to wear uniforms of certain colors? Why or why not?
10. What do you think makes certain color combinations work well together? Give me some examples.
11. If you had to choose only three colors to see for the rest of your life, which would you pick? Why those three?
12. What colors do you think will be trendy in fashion in the next few years? What makes you think so?
13. Some people say that wearing certain colors can make you more confident. Do you agree? Why or why not?
14. Why do you think so many fast food restaurants use red and yellow in their logos? Does it work on you?
15. How often do you choose what to buy based on color? How much does it affect you?

Upper-Intermediate (B2)

1. How has the use of color in advertising changed over the past few decades? What do you think about those changes?
2. Compare how color is used in traditional art versus digital art. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
3. How has technology changed the way we experience and use color? Think about screens, printing, and photography.
4. In many cultures, white is worn at funerals, while in others it’s black. What do these different color choices tell us about how cultures think about death and mourning?
5. How has the rise of social media changed the way people think about color in their homes, clothes, and food? What are the upsides and downsides of this?
6. Some cities have started painting buildings in bright colors to attract tourists. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this for the people who actually live there?
7. Studies show that people often rate the same food as tasting better or worse depending on the color of the plate or packaging. Why do you think color has this much power over our senses?
8. Many people say they don’t care about color when buying a product, but research shows color is one of the biggest factors in purchasing decisions. How do you explain this gap between what people say and what they actually do?
9. Cities like Marrakech, Santorini, and Havana are famous for their signature colors. How does a city’s color palette shape its identity, its economy, and the way outsiders perceive it?
10. Natural environments are full of greens, blues, and earth tones, while cities are increasingly gray and metallic. How does living surrounded by artificial colors instead of natural ones affect the way people think, feel, and behave over time?

Advanced (C1)

1. When someone uses color psychology in marketing or design, at what point does ‘influencing people’ become ‘manipulating people’?
2. How might increasing screen time simultaneously make people more aware of color variety and less sensitive to subtle color differences?
3. How does the commercial exploitation of color trends both drive creativity and limit genuine innovation in design?
4. How does accessibility for color-blind individuals challenge assumptions about the universality of color-based communication systems?
5. Different political movements have claimed specific colors throughout history, such as red, green, orange, and blue. How do colors gain political meaning, and once they do, can they ever go back to being ‘just a color’?
6. Luxury brands often use black, gold, and white, while discount brands use bright primary colors. How does color reinforce social class divisions, and are consumers aware of how much it influences them?
7. In many languages, certain colors don’t have their own word; speakers use the word for a nearby color instead. How might the language you speak actually change the way you see and experience color?
8. Skin color has shaped laws, borders, and entire social systems throughout history. Why has something as superficial as color had such deep and lasting power over how societies organize themselves?
9. Hospitals use calming blues and greens, restaurants use appetite-boosting reds, and tech companies use trustworthy blues. When entire industries choose colors based on psychological research, are people being helped or quietly controlled, and does the answer change depending on the industry?
10. Many workplaces have shifted from gray cubicles to colorful open offices, claiming it boosts creativity and morale. But workers often push back and say it’s distracting. Who actually benefits from these color changes, the employees or the company’s image, and how can you tell the difference?

PDF: Download a PDF of all the questions