Jade colors: every color and what causes it

Jade is not one color. Jadeite occurs in green, lavender, red, orange, yellow, brown, white, gray and black, and rarely in blue or with no color at all. Nephrite occurs in white, gray-green, green, yellow, brown and black, in more muted tones. Because jade is two different stones, the same jade color word can mean two different things: white jade, black jade, yellow jade and green jade each exist in both, with different causes and different values. If the two names are unfamiliar, start with jadeite vs nephrite.

Jade color chart

Color	Stone	What causes it	Trade name	How the trade regards it
Green	Jadeite	Chromium for vivid emerald green; iron for duller grassy, bluish and grayish greens	Imperial, kingfisher, apple	The most desirable jadeite color; intense green carries a large premium
Lavender	Jadeite	Manganese, according to GIA	Lavender, chun (春)	Next after green
Red, orange, brown	Jadeite	Rust-like iron oxides staining the skin of the boulder	Hong fei (红翡) for red	Popular, most of all when not brownish; often heated
Yellow	Jadeite	The same iron staining	Huang fei (黄翡)	Ranks below green and lavender; often heated
White	Jadeite	No coloring element; light scatters inside the rock	None in common use	Opaque white is entry-level material
Colorless	Jadeite	No coloring element, in fine, tightly packed grain	“Ice” jade	Can be very valuable when highly translucent
Black	Omphacite, a jadeite relative	Iron-rich omphacite; graphite in some gray to black jadeite	Mo cui (墨翠)	Popular; shows green against a strong light
Blue	Jadeite	Linked to iron and titanium in recent studies	None in common use	Rare, from Guatemala
White	Nephrite	Almost no iron	Bai yu (白玉)	The most valuable nephrite color at its finest, called mutton fat
Greenish white	Nephrite	A little iron	Qing bai yu (青白玉)	White with a slight greenish, bluish or grayish tint
Gray-green to blue-green	Nephrite	Iron	Qing yu (青玉)	By far the most plentiful and the least expensive
Green to dark green	Nephrite	More iron	Bi yu (碧玉), spinach green	Bright greens are worth more than dark ones
Yellow	Nephrite	Iron	Huang yu (黄玉)	Among the rarest, alongside fine white
Brown	Nephrite	Not settled; iron and manganese are implicated	Tang yu (糖玉), “sugar” jade	Often seen as a brown zone on white stone
Black	Nephrite	Graphite in white tremolite, or very high iron	Mo yu (墨玉)	Two different materials share the name
Black and white	Nephrite	Graphite	Qing hua (青花)	Black through white, like an ink painting

Two limits apply to this or any jade stone color chart. Shades cannot be matched from a screen, because cameras and lighting shift them. And trade names are not standardized: many of the color names sellers use were invented for marketing and have no agreed meaning. Dealers themselves advise ignoring the name and looking at the actual hue, how saturated it is, and whether it is gray. Some names do not refer to jade at all: GIA points out that labels such as “Mexican jade” or “Transvaal jade” usually mean other minerals.

What causes each color in jadeite

Colorless and white. Pure jadeite is colorless. According to the Gems & Gemology study of Burmese jade by Richard Hughes and co-authors, most jadeite looks white because light scatters inside the rock, and every other color comes from small amounts of other elements or minerals.

Green. Chromium causes the vivid emerald green, and very little is needed. Iron causes the duller grassy, bluish and grayish greens. The shades and their names are on the green jade page.

Lavender. The cause was disputed for decades, and an earlier explanation involved charge transfer between two forms of iron. A 2012 GIA study that measured the color-causing elements directly found it to be manganese. More on lavender jade.

Red, orange, yellow and brown. These come from hydrous iron oxides, rust-like minerals, staining the boundaries between grains. Reddish orange to brown jadeite is found only in boulders recovered from iron-rich soil, and the stain sits in the porous skin of the boulder. See red jade and yellow jade.

Black. Black jade of the jadeite family is mostly omphacite, a close relative of jadeite that GIA has documented in material from Guatemala. It looks black in ordinary light and green when a strong light passes through a thin part. Gray to black jadeite can also be colored by graphite.

Blue. GIA notes that rare jadeite from Guatemala is blue. A 2025 study in the journal Minerals links the blue of Guatemalan jadeite to iron together with titanium.

Primary and secondary color

Dealers divide jadeite colors into two groups. Primary colors formed with the crystals: green, lavender, white, black and the blue tones. Secondary colors arrived later from outside: red and yellow, carried in as the surface of the boulder weathered.

This explains where the colors sit. Red and yellow hug the old skin of the boulder, so they often show as a cap or a strip along one side of a piece. Where a green area meets a yellow one, the two overlap without blending, because the green is inside the crystals and the yellow fills tiny cracks between them.

Nephrite colors and the Chinese classes

Nephrite is made mainly of the mineral tremolite with variable actinolite, and its body color tracks its iron content. A GIA study found that essentially iron-free material is white and that the green deepens as iron rises.

Chinese nephrite is sorted into color classes: bai yu (white), qing bai yu (white with a slight tint), qing yu (gray-green to blue-green), bi yu (green to dark green), huang yu (yellow) and tang yu (brown, named for brown sugar). Dealers add mo yu (black) and qing hua (black mixed with white). Qing yu is by far the most plentiful and the cheapest, while fine white and true yellow are the rarest. Dealers do not agree on how much black or brown a piece needs before it earns the black or sugar name.

Two colors need a note:

• Black nephrite has two causes. In Chinese mo yu and qing hua, the black is graphite scattered through white tremolite. Other black nephrite is black because it is very rich in iron: samples from Guangxi studied by GIA researchers held 11.67 to 25.75 percent iron oxide by weight and showed green in thin slices. Black jade covers both, along with black jadeite.
• The cause of brown is open. A 2026 report from Guild Gem Laboratories describes the white-to-brown variation in sugar nephrite as unresolved, with iron, manganese and titanium implicated.

White nephrite and its top grade are covered under white jade.

Outside China, the Wyoming State Geological Survey describes that state’s nephrite as ranging from white to black, most of it green in shades it calls apple, emerald, leaf and olive. It attributes the green to iron and notes that lighter, brighter colors are rarer and generally worth more than dark ones. In New Zealand, Māori classify pounamu (greenstone) by color, markings and translucency, with four main varieties widely recognized: inanga, kahurangi, kawakawa and tangiwai, according to Te Papa, the national museum.

Multi-colored jade

Jadeite often shows more than one color in a piece, and three combinations have names:

• Moss-in-snow: translucent white with bright green veining or spots.
• Chun dai cai (春带彩): lavender together with green.
• Fu lu shou (福禄寿): red, green and lavender in one piece. The name comes from the three star gods of Chinese tradition, who stand for good fortune, prosperity and longevity, described by Britannica as the three attributes of a good life.

What each jade color means

These are traditions and beliefs. None is an effect of the stone.

Color	Traditional meaning	Source
Jade in general	Clarity of mind and purity of spirit; pure and enduring. Jadeite is said to symbolize prosperity, success and good luck	GIA
Green	In ancient Mesoamerica: water, vegetation, young maize and life, reserved for gods and rulers	The Metropolitan Museum of Art
White	Purity, and in the Confucian tradition the virtues of a gentleman. Fine white nephrite became the most esteemed jade of the Chinese court	GIA
Red	Red in Chinese culture stands for good fortune, happiness, celebration, fertility and prosperity, and is believed to repel evil. Red jadeite borrows this	Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art
Yellow	Imperial rank: in Qing-dynasty China certain yellows were restricted to the emperor and his immediate family. Collectors of nephrite have ranked yellow with the very best since the Ming dynasty	Victoria and Albert Museum; Sotheby’s

Lavender and black have no documented traditional meaning of their own. Jadeite reached China from Burma only in the late 1700s, so lavender has no place in the older jade tradition, which was built on nephrite. Sellers attach words such as romance, elegance or protection to these two colors. Treat those as modern trade lore. The best documented meaning involving lavender is the three-color fu lu shou above.

Colors that are not natural

Jadeite treatments are graded by letter. A jade is natural or only wax-polished, B jade has been bleached with acid and filled with polymer resin, and C jade has been dyed. Green, lavender and orange-brown are the colors known to be produced by dye. The grades are explained in type A, B and C jade.

Other ways color gets added or changed:

• Heat. Red and yellow jadeite is often heated to deepen the color, and GIA lists heat among jade treatments. In the Chinese trade a heated stone is still sold and certified as natural (A) jadeite, so ask if it matters to you.
• Colored polishing powder. Tinted powder rubbed into the surface wears off. Wiping the area with alcohol on a tissue picks up color.
• Foil or lacquer behind the stone. A colored backing hidden in a closed-back setting lends its color to a pale stone. A setting with no opening behind the stone deserves extra suspicion.

These checks narrow things down. Dye inside the stone and polymer filling cannot be ruled out by eye, and a gemological laboratory report is what settles whether a color is natural.

Colors that fade or shift after purchase are covered in does jade change color. For how color translates into price, see jade value by color.