Latin has many adjectives to describe colour and it is not always easy to ‘pin down’ the precise colour they visualised. Traupman explains:
“The vagueness of Latin color terms is due to the origin of colors out of dyestuff and pigments. The colors of minerals vary, and dyes produce different effects according to the mode of preparation and the materials dyed. Their applications have to be guessed from literary sources, which for the most part are incidental and vague. Color names used by poets tend to be applied metaphorically or indefinitely.”
However, when using colours from your own perspective in order, for example, to describe hair or clothes, the list below will form a sound basis.
1. albus, -a, -um: (dull) white
2. aureus, -a, -um: golden
3. candidus, -a, -um: shining white
4. cānus, -a, -um: grey(-haired)
5. caeruleus, -a, -um: blue; greenish-blue
6. cȳaneus, -a, -um: deep / dark blue
7. flāvus, -a, -um: yellow; blond
8. fuscus, -a, -um: dark; brown; also: brunneus, -a, -um (Late / Mediaeval): brown
9. prasinus, -a, -um: leek green; also: viridis, -e (a 3rd declension adjective)
10. purpureus, -a, -um: purple
11. roseus, -a, -um: pink
12. rūfus, -a, -um: red (of hair)
13. āter, ātra, ātrum: matt black
14. niger, nigra, nigrum: shining black
15. ruber, rubra, rubrum: red
Alternatively, Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestley in “The Devil wears Prada” explains the subtlety of colour:
This… “stuff”? Oh, okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You… go to your closet, and you select… I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back, but what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean.
You can look up any of the adjectives in Wiktionary and a more detailed list of all colours is given.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/niger#Adjective
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