Bricklink<->LEGO Color Translation Table

[Vee]

I am TIRED of trying to figure out which color is which! So, with the help of LDD, LDD Manager, Photoshop, OneNote and Excel (don't ask me why I needed all these apps...) I made this table that is supposed to be complete (for all colors available ATM in LDD). I guess this already exists somewhere but since I was not able to find something similar, I decided to do a conversion table myself. From BrickLink to Lego and vice-versa in alphabetical order.

Edited January 29, 2014 by Vee

[Pizzareno]

This may be similar to what you want/have.

http://www.peeron.com/inv/colors

[Vee]

No, it is not similar, it is BETTER! hehehehe.

Thanks for showing it to me, I like it.

[kinggregus]

Thanks Vee. I am amazed about the number of colors.

I recently was very frustrated as I needed to buy a few bricks to qualify for the free delivery. I had not noticed that dark tan=sand yellow on the Lego shop. Moreover, the color on the website looked like tan so I ended buying some black and brown bricks which I do not really need.

Had I seen your list or the peeron list, I would have been a happy man.

Personally, I find the bricklink names to make much more sense.

[Pizzareno]

No, it is not similar, it is BETTER! hehehehe.

Thanks for showing it to me, I like it.

I'm glad I could help

[Vee]

Thanks Vee. I am amazed about the number of colors.

I recently was very frustrated as I needed to buy a few bricks to qualify for the free delivery. I had not noticed that dark tan=sand yellow on the Lego shop. Moreover, the color on the website looked like tan so I ended buying some black and brown bricks which I do not really need.

Had I seen your list or the peeron list, I would have been a happy man.

Personally, I find the bricklink names to make much more sense.

Yw, King. My table only lists colors found in LDD while Peeron's lists also retired colors. Since we can find retired colors in BL, this is useful.

And yes, the number of colors is amazing but it is also amazing that despite Lego producing so many colors, only a few are really more useful since you can't find interesting parts in many of these colors or, if you can find in some, they will be considered "rare" for the bricks you want and will have prohibitive prices.

[AmperZand]

And yes, the number of colors is amazing but it is also amazing that despite Lego producing so many colors, only a few are really more useful since you can't find interesting parts in many of these colors or, if you can find in some, they will be considered "rare" for the bricks you want and will have prohibitive prices.

I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect it's fairly straightforward and not too costly for TLG to produce a new colour. On the other hand, maintaining a colour in lots of different parts probably is expensive. So TLG can produce a part in a new colour if a set requires it, but once the production for that set ends, so does the colour. It doesn't get revived unless a specific set needs a part in that colour.

[Vee]

That is the problem. It is easy for Lego to produce a new color, then they produce it for a few parts for a new set, then they reuse this color a few times with other sets, then they retire the color or the theme that used it and the color will rarely be used again. So the table of colors keeps growing, making us believe we have this so many colors to choose from, but we have not. Only a few parts were produced in a given color and they become expensive in BrickLink. PAB, for instance, has a very very very limited choice of colors. Only the most basic colors have enough parts to be useful.

Example: headlight brick 1x1 (4070), I needed it in dark orange, it does not exist, according to BL, I wanted the very common 1x1 slope (54200) also in dark orange, it does not exist. I wanted the very common 1x1 plate (3024), also in dark orange, it does exist but it is so rare that its price is prohibitive, it is the same as not existing for me.

[antp]

The Peeron table is maybe not fully up-to-date.

It lists the ParaPink (the pink from Paradisa sets in the 90s) as Bricklink's Light Pink, but Bricklink actually lists ParaPink as regular Pink (which is to me an error from Bricklink, ParaPink and Pink are different colors, former one has a little "yellow" in it, like the old Gray vs the Light Bluish Gray). And both are different from the current Bright Pink.

Edited January 31, 2014 by antp

[Vee]

And my table is as reliable as LDD Manager is since it uses solely the conversions from LDD Manager.

One thing that I don't understand well is why BrickLink/Peeron/WhateverElse use color names that don't match Lego's. No matter how weirdly Lego names its colors, one should stick to the official names, firstly to avoid confusion and secondly because they are the official names. Why have alternate names?

I agree that "Tan" is a much better name and truer to the color than Brick Yellow but it doesn't matter, Lego chose Brick Yellow then Brick Yellow it should always be, etc.

Edited January 31, 2014 by Vee

[antp]

I think that these other sites started to make color lists and parts database before Lego used their names in public, so they didn't have any official basis except the part numbers which were molded under the bricks.

[Lyichir]

And my table is as reliable as LDD Manager is since it uses solely the conversions from LDD Manager.

One thing that I don't understand well is why BrickLink/Peeron/WhateverElse use color names that don't match Lego's. No matter how weirdly Lego names its colors, one should stick to the official names, firstly to avoid confusion and secondly because they are the official names. Why have alternate names?

I agree that "Tan" is a much better name and truer to the color than Brick Yellow but it doesn't matter, Lego chose Brick Yellow then Brick Yellow it should always be, etc.

The main reason why sites use alternate names for the colors is that because the official names were not widely known until fairly recently. Lego's online database of replacement parts is a fairly recent thing. My brother Aanchir did a lot of work several years back trying to figure out what Lego's official color names were, and a lot of his sources were obscure things like Bionicle mask Collector's Guides and the like (which remain some of his main sources for colors that were rarely used for anything other than that). It gets more confusing as well, because Bricklink often conflates rarer colors like transparent or metallic colors (for instance, Bricklink's Copper actually refers to as many as four different colors). But that's the issue with having a database that is completely user-generated, and for a long time that was all AFOLs had to go on.

Regarding Brick Yellow, that's just part of Lego's tendency to denote colors by modifiers rather than by unique names, as shown here. Brick Yellow seems to have little in common with Yellow, but put on a spectrum with colors like Sand Yellow (referred to by most AFOLs and Bricklink as Dark Tan) and the rare color Brick Red, it starts to make at least a little bit more sense.

[Calabar]

The user Aanchir in the LDD forum is a very colour expert and created a complete and updated colour chart.

I don't know if the chart present in the LDD Reference topic is up to date ad the moment, but it should be good enough.

He collaborates too in the LDD Manager conversion table.

Probably Aanchir is the right user to contact for some explanation and suggestions about this thread.

The management of colours in digital LEGO is not trivial.

[Aanchir]

Ah, my brother referred me to this topic a few days ago and I keep forgetting to come back to it. Anyhow, creating a direct reference table between Bricklink names and LEGO names is difficult because Bricklink has a tendency to identify multiple colors by one name, and at the same time has a tendency to use one name for multiple colors.

This spreadsheet is where I currently keep track of how Bricklink and LEGO colors relate to one another. It's not perfect nor complete, and sometimes I wonder if any comparison table between different AFOL naming systems CAN be perfected and completed.

AFOL naming systems and the LEGO Group's naming system sometimes work at cross-purposes, because the LEGO Group is concerned with the production side of things (i.e. the materials), and AFOLs are concerned with the user side of things (i.e. the physical appearance of the colors). For instance, officially, this piece is transparent red, but from a production standpoint its material ID is 41 Transparent Red. It only appears opaque because it is molded in polypropylene, a softer plastic material, rather than polycarbonate, the hard, glassy-looking plastic material used for most transparent parts.

Likewise, most AFOLs probably don't care about the differences between certain colors that look close to identical. Even if they do care, it can take them years to recognize that a part that looks different is actually a different color from a production standpoint and not just a result of quality issues in the part. Bricklink identifies Dark Pink as a single color that has been in production for twenty years, when in fact ten years ago the earlier dark pink color (22 Medium Reddish Violet) was replaced with a new Dark Pink color (121 Bright Purple). This was a part of the same 2004 color overhaul where 2 Grey, 27 Dark Grey, and 25 Earth Orange (classic brown) were replaced with 194 Medium Stone Grey, 199 Dark Stone Grey, and 192 Reddish Brown. But dark pink is a rare enough color, and the differences subtle enough, that Bricklink doesn't bother to differentiate between the two variants.

So overall, I admire your effort and I hope my chart helps you complete or correct any issues with your own chart. Feel free to ask me if you have any specific questions. I have put a lot of work into researching the LEGO color chart, and being able to help people overcome confusion related to that chart does a lot to convince me that all that effort was not wasted.

[Faefrost]

That is the problem. It is easy for Lego to produce a new color, then they produce it for a few parts for a new set, then they reuse this color a few times with other sets, then they retire the color or the theme that used it and the color will rarely be used again. So the table of colors keeps growing, making us believe we have this so many colors to choose from, but we have not. Only a few parts were produced in a given color and they become expensive in BrickLink. PAB, for instance, has a very very very limited choice of colors. Only the most basic colors have enough parts to be useful.

Example: headlight brick 1x1 (4070), I needed it in dark orange, it does not exist, according to BL, I wanted the very common 1x1 slope (54200) also in dark orange, it does not exist. I wanted the very common 1x1 plate (3024), also in dark orange, it does exist but it is so rare that its price is prohibitive, it is the same as not existing for me.

During the great rethinking of things and simplifying things after the near financial disaster of '03, TLG took steps to place limits on the overall color palett in order, among other factors, to prevent the sorts of things that you mention. I believe TLG currently places hard limits on the number of active colors. And in order for something new to be added, something must be retired. So internal business practices now make it much harder to simply add a color for a handful of sets or parts. A new color is a much bigger deal and has the expectation that it will be broadly used.

[Donald]

On 1/29/2014 at 11:51 PM, Vee said:

I am TIRED of trying to figure out which color is which! So, with the help of LDD, LDD Manager, Photoshop, OneNote and Excel (don't ask me why I needed all these apps...) I made this table that is supposed to be complete (for all colors available ATM in LDD). I guess this already exists somewhere but since I was not able to find something similar, I decided to do a conversion table myself. From BrickLink to Lego and vice-versa in alphabetical order.

Would you happen to have an updated and also parsable version of this table, say as HTML, CSV, Excel?

Thanks!

Donald

[NathanR]

This has been my go-to guide for a while now, not sure if it has all the same colours listed though:

http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Colour_Palette

Any use?

[Donald]

5 minutes ago, NathanR said:

This has been my go-to guide for a while now, not sure if it has all the same colours listed though:

http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Colour_Palette

Any use?

Yes, thank you! I'll try and merge what I find useful and will report back. 

[Aanchir]

Since my last post here, I became aware of @Lt. de Martinet having created a pretty top-notch LEGO color cross-reference: http://ryanhowerter.net/colors.html

It's a lot more comprehensive than Wikia's list and each color even links to an image of examples on Flickr.

Edited June 14, 2018 by Aanchir

[zux]

Few more:

Mecabricks

LDraw

[Donald]

On 6/14/2018 at 9:23 PM, Aanchir said:

Since my last post here, I became aware of @Lt. de Martinet having created a pretty top-notch LEGO color cross-reference: http://ryanhowerter.net/colors.html

It's a lot more comprehensive than Wikia's list and each color even links to an image of examples on Flickr.

It seems this is the best overall list and it will do the job (of translating the LEGO colours for my personal Access database) good enough.  

On 6/14/2018 at 10:31 PM, zux said:

Mecabricks

Mecabricks has the advantage of being a nice printable PDF. 

[koalayummies]

Bricklink should just get their nonsense together already and finally use the official Lego color names. Bluish? What are they, ages 4-7?

[Donald]

40 minutes ago, koalayummies said:

Bricklink should just get their nonsense together already and finally use the official Lego color names. Bluish? What are they, ages 4-7?

I think Bricklink had to name their colours before Lego published their colour names. The names Bricklink uses are also a better description of the actual colour in plain english. 

[koalayummies]

2 hours ago, Donald said:

I think Bricklink had to name their colours before Lego published their colour names. The names Bricklink uses are also a better description of the actual colour in plain english. 

Yes, I read the thread and the post above from 2014 that stated that was the reason why bricklink has its own hodgepodge of inaccurate color names. However it has been 5 years and Lego openly provides the official color names now; bricklink should get with the times.

Bricklink's descriptions are not better; they're vague, often lead to confusion and most importantly not official. Hence this thread, the conversion/translator and countless other threads on Lego color names. They should be using official terminology for consistency and then things like this conversion application won't be needed. After all it was you who bumped this thread asking for an updated version. If bricklink just used the official Lego names then we wouldn't even be here.

[zux]

12 hours ago, koalayummies said:

Bricklink should just get their nonsense together already and finally use the official Lego color names. Bluish? What are they, ages 4-7?

I think it would be better to be done the other way around, where TLG adopt Bricklink's (or better name it call it community) colour naming standard, as it is much more clear. TLG has quite vague names to be honest. Do you know what "light reddish violet" [TLG] colour is? Pink!