What is the ugliest colour?

I have realized over the years of making art that there is no bad color, only colors used wrongly. A nice color mixed the wrong way or put on the wrong thing can become bad. In your case it could just be a bad color usage.

Personal taste rules. Ugly to you and to me are different.

Pink isn’t my favorite, but there are some pale blues that look like fresh dirt.

What @elbanditoroso said, it’s all about personal taste and association. There are a couple of shades of a certain type of yellow that always make me think that they came out of the wrong end of a sick dog.

I don’t care for green color cars.

Baby poop colors tend to not be pretty in my opinion. Those would be very yellow browns and some shades of green. I love green and brown though in other shades. I have a lot of green and brown in my house, and I’ve always though I look good in rich brown clothing. I’m not very fond of a lot of yellows also. It’s just certain shades.

For cars, pink is the worst color.

Two neighborhoods over from me, there is a house painted this color at the end of a cul-de-sac. How the neighbors feel is another story.

@flutherother Chartreuse.

pea green

Taupe. Any blend of gray and brown or beige. The most “neutral” of neutral colors.

Every hue comes in some hideous shades, but those dead noncolors are the worst.

What excuses them, in art, is that they are often needed for shadows. When you look at, say, a portrait done realistically and with natural-looking shadows, you tend not to see the actual color that was on the brush to render the shadow; instead, you see it as a continuation of the expected flesh color, as it appears out of the light.

Even when I look at a portrait that I’ve done, let’s say of a subject wearing glasses, I tend to forget that I had to use another color and create that shadow; instead it just looks like a shadow. And those often depend on the very colors I dislike using. The shadows are what make the form.

To choose them as a color to wear, though, or to live inside or drive around in . . . well, I never would.

Just curious: when you answer, are you actually naming the color you dislike the most, versus the one you think is ugliest? Or do you consider them to be the same thing?

I know there are colors that I dislike more than the taupe family, but I didn’t answer on dislike.

There’s also the matter of application. We might paint a wall a color that we would never wear, or accent a sofa with a throw cushion in a color we would never use to paint the wall. I might wear a bright shade of top now and then just for fun, but I wouldn’t drive a car of that color.

I’ve been noticing (here and elsewhere) how readily people equate “It’s good” with “I like it”—about movies, books, art, styles, foods, etc.—and I wonder if we are simply losing the distinction between judicious evaluation and preferential taste.

Gray.

So interesting the answers so far.

I love the color taupe and @Jeruba chose that as the one she finds to be the ugliest.

I would say I answered colors I dislike. What the colors remind me of or make me think of for the most part. Although, yellow has simply been a color I was never drawn to. There was a time when a lot of people had a yellow kitchen. I was never fond of it. Although, I can appreciate some color combinations like a soft grey and yellow can be nice. Not soft that I would call it pastel, but simply not a very bright hue. I also like some darker mustard yellows in patterns.

I can’t think of any that are ugly all alone. I might say “that’s an ugly bruise”, purple and yellow and pink, but nothing stands out on it’s own.

I am going with Vomit Yellow.

School bus yellow on anything other than a bus leaves me feeling put off!!!

Petmo Bismo color pink (like a dullish pink), and that reddish brownish color that you get on the last days of your cycle or you see when the meat has been left out too long defrosting and the blood on it has that brownish-red color. It always makes my stomach queasy. Blech! Not a fan of neon colors of any type either. Okay for decoration on kids’ clothing or reflective clothing for biking or jogging at night only. Both colors are ugly in small amounts or large amounts.

Interesting that the “Related” questions 9n the right ————> are about food.

@canidmajor The color of food can tell us what is edible and what is not. If you see greenish mold on your food you know not to eat it or if your meat has turned that ugly brown color it’s likely spoiled. Same for black or darkish brown spots, reddish spots on fruits. Bad memories can also be associated with color. Like I probably hate Petmo Bismo color because I remember being force-fed it as a kid, and or that horrible liquid antibiotic when I was sick. There was always vomiting afterward because of the bad horrid taste.

@Pandora, yeah, I know all that. I would think, however, that questions about decorating would be more immediately relatable to a non-food-related question about color, especially since neither this main Q, nor the details have a single food related referent.

@canidmajor It still matters in decorating. The colors will still bring up feelings with what you see. Like a ton of people like blue. It makes people feel calm. Though you wouldn’t jump to eat food that turned blue. The brownish-red color I mentioned is almost a rust color and can make things look old. Color preferences come with how they make you feel. You are either repulsed or attracted. I love red and blue. But I wouldn’t make a room all red or all blue. Too much blue can make you feel tired and too much red can feel overwhelming. But some colors give a repulsive feel to them even when it’s a little. I don’t own not one rust blouse or even socks or jewelry. Or even that Petmo Bismo color. I did buy a rug once that had some rusty color but it but it looked slightly different in the store light. At home, it was that ugly color. I thought I could live with it, but within a week I had to get rid of it. I was sad seeing it everyday. It did go well in the room, but it made the room look bleak. Some colors sap joy away. I love certain yellows but not the really dark yellow or the really bright yellow and definitely not neon yellow.

@Pandora, do you mean Pepto-Bismol?

It was just a casual comment.

Lime green.
sample:
https://www.colorcombos.com/colors/CEFA05

@Jeruba Yes. LOL, It’s been years since I’ve seen a bottle, and I thought I remembered the name correctly. Obviously not.