Using Color Symbols in Tarot Cards: The Rider-Waite-Smith Palette

Quick guide

Color is one of the quickest ways into a tarot card. In the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of 1909, Pamela Colman Smith used a small, repeating palette: yellow skies for clarity and daylight, red for action and will, blue for feeling and the inner life, white for innocence and fresh starts, black for the unknown and for endings, grey for neutrality and waiting, green for growth. None of these are rules, and Smith never published a color key; they are conventions readers have drawn from the pictures over a century. Modern decks change the palette freely, from the flat primaries of the Marseille pattern to the black ink of the Wild Unknown, so the method matters more than any single chart. Used well, color is a prompt: you name what you see, say what it suggests, and turn that into a question about your situation. It does not predict anything, and it never overrides the scene on the card.

Most people notice a card’s figure first and its color last, but color is doing a lot of the work. Put the Sun next to the Nine of Swords and the difference is obvious before you read a single symbol: one is yellow and open, the other is black and cramped. Pamela Colman Smith was a professional illustrator who understood that, and she painted the 78 cards with a limited set of colors that repeat in consistent ways. This guide explains how that palette works, gives a table you can keep beside your deck, shows how later decks have changed the colors, and offers a simple method for using color as a prompt without over-reading it.

Where the Rider-Waite-Smith palette comes from

The deck was commissioned by Arthur Edward Waite, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and that society had an elaborate system of color scales assigning shades to the Tree of Life and the Hebrew letters. Aleister Crowley’s Thoth deck, painted later by Lady Frieda Harris, follows those scales closely. Waite’s deck does not. Smith worked quickly, in about six months in 1909, for a commercial publisher, and her colors come from the needs of the picture and the limits of early color printing rather than from an occult chart. That is why her palette is simple: a handful of flat colors, used repeatedly, so that a yellow sky or a red cloak means roughly the same thing wherever it appears.

It is also worth knowing that the colors you see depend on your edition. The 1909 printing was muted. The widely sold editions from the 1970s onward are brighter, the Universal Waite of 1990 was recolored in softer tones by Mary Hanson-Roberts, the Radiant Rider-Waite of 2003 brightened everything again, and the Smith-Waite Centennial Edition of 2009 went back toward the original muted shades. The scenes are identical; the mood shifts with the ink.

The RWS colors at a glance

Color	Conventional reading	Where you see it
Yellow	Clarity, daylight, awareness, optimism, mental energy	The skies of the Fool, the Magician, Strength and the Four of Wands; the Sun; the background of the Nine of Cups
Red	Action, will, desire, vitality, the body	The Magician’s mantle, the Emperor’s robe and throne, the Hierophant’s robe, Justice’s robe, the Hanged Man’s leggings, Temperance’s wings
Blue	Feeling, the inner life, calm, reflection, water	The High Priestess’s robe, the Star’s sky, the Queen of Cups, the night of the Two of Swords and the Eight of Cups
White	Innocence, purity, a fresh start, what is not yet marked	The Fool’s rose, Death’s horse and rose, Strength’s dress, Temperance’s robe, the Sun’s horse, the Magician’s inner robe
Black	The unknown, endings, the unconscious, fear, what is hidden	Death’s armor and banner, the Devil’s background, the skies of the Tower, the Nine of Swords and the Ten of Swords
Grey	Neutrality, waiting, wisdom that has cooled, in-between states	The Hermit’s cloak, the Hierophant’s pillars, the storm clouds of the Three of Swords
Green	Growth, nature, fertility, health, patience	The Empress’s forest, the World’s wreath, the vine of the Seven of Pentacles, the garden of the Nine of Pentacles

How the colors work together

The palette earns its keep in combinations. The Magician wears a white inner robe under a red mantle: a clear intention wrapped in the will to act. Death rides a white horse and carries a black banner with a white rose: an ending and a fresh start in the same image, which is why readers treat the card as change rather than doom. Temperance has white robes, red wings and blue water, a figure holding opposites in balance. The Fool stands in a yellow sky holding a white rose: open awareness and innocence at the edge of a cliff.

Contrast matters as much as presence. The Star is dominated by blue, yellow and green, with no black anywhere, which is part of why it reads as relief. The Devil is mostly black and grey, with no open sky at all. The Ten of Swords has a black sky with a thin band of yellow at the horizon, the detail readers point to when they say the card contains the end of a bad night rather than the night itself. A color that is missing from a card can tell you as much as one that dominates it.

How modern decks change the palette

Because the RWS colors are conventions and not rules, deck designers have felt free to change them, and each change shifts how the cards read.

Marseille-pattern decks use a few flat printer’s colors, red, blue, yellow, green and flesh, applied by stencil, with no attempt at mood. Color there identifies parts of a figure, not feelings.
The Thoth deck uses the Golden Dawn color scales, so that each card’s palette is a code for its place on the Tree of Life. Its colors are meant to be looked up, not felt.
Black-and-white decks such as the Wild Unknown of 2012 remove color almost entirely, so that line, texture and a single accent carry the mood. Readers who learned on RWS often find these decks quieter and more open.
Pastel and watercolor decks soften every contrast, which makes the “hard” cards gentler and can blur the difference between a Tower and a Star at a glance.
Dark or neon decks push the other way, giving every card a night-time or high-energy feel that flattens the daylight cards.

None of this makes one palette right. It means a reader should learn the palette of the deck in their hands and not import RWS color meanings into a deck that was painted on different principles.

Using color as a prompt in a reading

Read the scene first. Name the figure, the action and the objects before you think about color. Color supports the picture; it does not replace it.
Name the dominant color in one word. “This card is mostly blue.” Then say what that color conventionally suggests: feeling, reflection, the inner life.
Look for the contrast. Find the smallest patch of a different color and ask what it is doing there. The yellow horizon on the Ten of Swords and the red cross on Judgement’s flag are the kind of detail that opens a card up.
Compare across the spread. Three cards with black skies describe a different week from three cards with yellow ones. If a spread is all one color, that is worth saying out loud.
Turn it into a question. “Where is the daylight in this situation?” or “What am I keeping in the dark?” is the useful end point. A color never answers a question by itself.

Common mistakes with color

Treating color as a secret code. There is no key that says red always means X. The conventions are loose, and the picture always wins.
Reading a feeling into a card and calling it the card’s message. Noticing that a yellow card lifts your mood is useful; concluding that yellow “predicts” good news is confirmation bias dressed up as symbolism.
Ignoring the edition. A grey sky in one printing is blue in another. If a color is doing a lot of work in your reading, check it against a second copy or the original.
Forgetting that not everyone sees color the same way. Roughly one in twelve men and one in two hundred women have some form of color vision deficiency. Describing a card by its scene as well as its color keeps the reading open to everyone.

Key takeaways

The Rider-Waite-Smith palette is small and repeating: yellow for clarity, red for action, blue for feeling, white for fresh starts, black for the unknown, grey for waiting, green for growth.
These readings are conventions drawn from the pictures, not a published key, and Waite’s deck only loosely follows the Golden Dawn color scales.
Combinations and contrasts, such as Death’s white horse and black banner, carry more meaning than any single color.
Modern decks change the palette on purpose, so learn the colors of the deck in your hands.
Use color as a prompt: scene first, dominant color, contrast, comparison across the spread, then a question. It never predicts anything.

Frequently asked questions

1. What does yellow mean on a tarot card?

In the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, yellow skies and backgrounds are conventionally read as clarity, daylight, awareness and optimism. The Fool, the Magician, Strength and the Sun all use it.

2. What does red mean in tarot?

Red is usually read as action, will, desire and vitality. It appears on the Magician’s mantle, the Emperor’s robe and throne, the Hierophant and Justice, and on Temperance’s wings.

3. What does blue mean in tarot?

Blue is conventionally feeling, reflection, calm and the inner life, often shown as water or night. The High Priestess, the Star and the Queen of Cups are strongly blue.

4. What do white and black mean on the Death card?

Death rides a white horse and carries a black banner with a white rose. Readers take the pairing to mean an ending and a fresh start in the same image, which is why the card is read as change rather than literal death.

5. What does grey mean in tarot?

Grey is usually read as neutrality, waiting, or wisdom that has cooled. The Hermit’s cloak, the Hierophant’s pillars and the storm clouds of the Three of Swords are the familiar examples.

6. What does green mean in tarot?

Green is growth, nature, fertility, health and patience. The Empress’s forest, the World’s wreath and the gardens of the Pentacles cards carry it.

7. Did Pamela Colman Smith publish a color key?

No. The color readings used today are conventions drawn from the pictures by later readers and writers. Waite’s book on the deck says little about color.

8. Does the Rider-Waite-Smith deck follow the Golden Dawn color scales?

Only loosely. The Golden Dawn had detailed color scales, and the Thoth deck follows them closely, but Smith painted the RWS cards with a simple commercial palette chosen for the pictures.

9. Why do colors differ between editions of the same deck?

Because the deck has been reprinted and recolored many times since 1909. The original was muted; later editions are brighter or softer. The scenes are the same, so the scene should lead the reading.

10. How do modern decks change the meaning of color?

They change the palette on purpose: Marseille decks use flat printer’s colors, the Thoth deck uses coded color scales, black-and-white decks remove color almost entirely, and pastel decks soften every contrast. Learn the palette of the deck you use.

11. Can the color of a card predict anything?

No. Color is a prompt for reflection, like every other symbol on a card. Noticing that a spread is full of yellow can help you ask a better question; it cannot tell you what will happen.

12. What is the best way to practise reading color?

Lay out the Sun, the Star, the Nine of Swords and the Devil side by side, name the dominant color of each in one word, then find the smallest patch of a different color on each card and say what it adds.

13. What if a card has no dominant color?

Then read the scene and move on. Many cards are evenly mixed, and forcing a color reading onto them is the kind of over-interpretation that makes tarot less useful, not more.

14. How should I describe colors for someone who is color-blind?

Describe the scene first and the color second: “a figure in a cloak on a grey mountain” works for everyone. Color vision deficiency affects roughly one in twelve men, so this habit matters more than it seems.

Evidence note: The color readings in this article are conventions attached to the Rider-Waite-Smith deck (1909) and the guidebooks that followed it; they are not findings, and Smith left no color key. Tarot began as a card game in 1430s Italy according to Britannica, and no reading has been shown to predict events or read minds. Reading a feeling into a color and then treating it as proof is an example of confirmation bias, which is why the scene should always lead. Health, legal and money questions belong with professionals.