You may think you can splash any hue onto a canvas, a wall, or a piece of pottery whenever the mood strikes. Yet, the world of pigments hides a surprisingly shadowy roster of shades that are practically off‑limits. Whether they’re poisonous, tied up in ancient royalty, or locked behind exclusive licensing deals, these ten colors belong on a “do‑not‑use” list. Welcome to the top 10 forbidden colors you’ll never see in a mainstream paint store.
Why These Shades Are Top 10 Forbidden
10 Mummy Brown
In the sixteenth century, European artists suddenly started wielding a curious shade of brown that went by the macabre moniker “Mummy Brown.” Far from a fanciful label, the pigment was literally ground‑up ancient Egyptian mummies. The craze for all things Egyptian—so‑called “Egyptomania”—swept across Europe and the United States during the nineteenth century, turning mummies into décor, medicine, paper, and even party tricks at unrolling events. The exact recipes differed, but every version of the paint incorporated actual mummy tissue, making it virtually impossible for modern analysts to distinguish a work that employed the pigment without invasive testing.
The grim secret wasn’t always obvious. When the Pre‑Raphaelite painter Edward Burne‑Jones finally learned that his beloved brown hue was derived from ancient remains, he staged an impromptu funeral for the mummy in his own garden. The color’s reign, much like the civilization that birthed it, eventually ran out of steam. By 1964, the last known manufacturer announced they had exhausted their supply of mummified bodies, lamenting, “We might have a few odd limbs lying around somewhere but not enough to make any more paint.” Anyone hoping to recreate the shade today will quickly discover that sourcing the raw material is, to put it mildly, a dead end.
9 Vantablack
Vantablack is arguably the darkest substance ever engineered, gobbling up 99.965% of visible light. Developed by the British firm Surrey NanoSystems in the early 2000s, it earned a Guinness World Record for its light‑absorbing prowess until a less‑glamorous material called “dark chameleon dimers” snatched the title in 2015. Its applications range from coating telescope interiors to stealth technology for military camouflage, and even to experimental solar‑energy collectors. However, when it comes to artistic use, the paint is locked behind an exclusive licensing agreement.
The only artist legally permitted to employ Vantablack in a work of art is Anish Kapoor, whose fame stems from the iconic bean‑shaped Cloud Gate in Chicago. Kapoor’s monopoly sparked fierce backlash, prompting fellow creator Stuart Semple to launch an arsenal of alternative “for‑everyone” colors—Pinkest Pink, Black 2.0, Black 3.0, and Diamond Dust—explicitly barred from Kapoor’s hands. For those who still crave a near‑absolute black, Massachusetts‑based NanoLab offers a public‑available rival called Singularity Black, delivering a similarly abyssal effect without the licensing drama.
8 Tyrian Purple
Royalty has long been associated with a deep, reddish‑purple hue, and the ancient world took that connection to literal extremes. In the Roman Empire, any commoner daring enough to wear purple faced execution. Queen Elizabeth I codified the color’s exclusivity in her Sumptuary Laws, reserving it for the royal family alone. Known as Tyrian purple—or Imperial purple—the dye was so prized that it earned the nickname “the blood of the gods,” its hue reminiscent of dried blood and thus symbolizing divine lineage.
The rarity stemmed from a labor‑intensive extraction process. Phoenician workers in the city of Tyre harvested hundreds of thousands of sea snails, cracked their shells, and exposed the secret glands to sunlight, a method that emitted a horrendous odor. Roughly 250,000 snails were needed to produce a single ounce of dye, making the pigment as valuable as gold. The resulting color never faded, proudly displaying its owners’ wealth. The monopoly persisted until 1856, when teenage chemist William Henry Perkin, experimenting with anti‑malaria compounds, stumbled upon a cheap synthetic alternative—mauve—that finally democratized purple for the masses.
7 Vermillion
Vermillion, also called cinnabar or China red, shines with a vivid red‑orange that owes its brilliance to mercury. The finer the mercury particles, the brighter the hue. This pigment has a storied 8,000‑year history, from Roman artisans extracting it from Spanish mines for cosmetics and illuminated manuscripts, to medieval monks using it to embellish sacred texts. The mining process was perilous; prisoners and slaves toiled in the Spanish mines of Almadén, crushing the ore and heating it to produce the coveted pigment.
Chinese artisans also embraced vermillion, dubbing it “China red” and blending it with tree sap to adorn temples, pottery, and ink. Although the Chinese eventually synthesized cinnabar, the material remained toxic. By the twentieth century, cadmium red—far less hazardous and more stable—supplanted vermillion among artists. Nonetheless, the bold scarlet persists in Chinese culture as a symbol of luck and happiness.
6 Scheele’s Green
At the dawn of the nineteenth century, a dazzling shade of emerald green stormed Victorian high society. German chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele unveiled the pigment, which quickly became the go‑to color for fashionable ladies attending soirées across Europe. The new gas‑lamp lighting of the era made night‑time gatherings brighter, and Scheele’s Green offered the perfect pop of vivid hue for dresses, wallpaper, carpeting, and even artificial foliage.
Unfortunately, the brilliance came at a deadly price. The pigment was concocted using copper arsenite, a compound riddled with arsenic. Wearers suffered blistering skin, families experienced green‑tinged vomiting, and factory workers faced organ failure. One tragic case involved a faux‑flower maker named Matilda Scheurer, who vomited green, turned the whites of her eyes green, and claimed everything she saw appeared green before she died. Despite early awareness of arsenic’s toxicity, the allure of the shade delayed public health warnings until 1895, when the fashion world finally abandoned the hazardous pigment.
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5 Lead White
From as early as the fourth century B.C., ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians relied on a thick, creamy white pigment known as lead white for everything from makeup to medicine to paint. Classical authors such as Pliny and Vestruvius documented its production, which involved soaking lead in vinegar and scraping off the resulting white powder. Artists who employed it often suffered from “Painter’s Colic,” a historic term now recognized as lead poisoning.
The pigment’s buttery consistency and rapid drying made it a favorite among European painters for centuries. However, lead exposure—whether inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through the skin—inflicts lasting damage on the brain and kidneys. Despite clear evidence of its toxicity, no suitable substitute matched its warm, creamy tones, so lead white persisted in studios until it was finally banned in the 1970s.
4 Uranium Orange
In 1936, the American ceramics giant Fiestaware introduced a bold orange‑red glaze dubbed “Fiesta Red.” The striking hue derived its color from uranium oxide, making the dishes literally radioactive. Production halted between 1943 and 1959 as uranium was diverted for wartime efforts, and when manufacturing resumed, the company switched to depleted uranium—a slightly less radioactive form.
Radioactive dinnerware was not unique to Fiestaware; many mid‑century ceramics incorporated uranium or other radioactive elements. The EPA now warns that such pieces can emit alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. Fiestaware continued producing the line until 1972, after which the collection became a coveted antique. Collectors still prize the original radioactive pieces, though experts advise against consuming food from them, especially acidic dishes. Modern Fiestaware still exists, but its colors now avoid uranium and lead entirely.
3 Radium Green
In 1908, a luminous green paint hit the market, glowing brightly in the dark and finding immediate use on watch and compass faces. Radium, the radioactive element responsible for the glow, flooded the consumer market at the turn of the century, appearing in drinks, candy, creams, soaps, spas, and even swimming pools. The glowing effect was marketed as a sign of health and vitality, and the military adopted radium‑lit watches during World War I.
The factories that applied the paint employed young women known as the “Radium Girls.” To achieve a fine brush tip, they licked their brushes, and many also dabbed the luminous paint onto their faces for a party‑ready glow. By the 1920s, workers began exhibiting severe radiation poisoning: jaw and tooth decay, painful sores, and eventual death. In 1928, Grace Fryer spearheaded a lawsuit against the New Jersey factory, drawing national attention and ultimately securing workers’ rights and safety standards. Radium paint fell out of use after 1968, replaced today by photoluminescent pigments that are safe and non‑radioactive.
2 Red‑Green and Blue‑Yellow
These paired hues aren’t outlawed by any ruler, nor are they made from hazardous substances. Instead, they’re practically invisible to the human eye because red and green, as well as blue and yellow, cancel each other out inside the retina. Our eyes translate incoming light into neural signals, and when these complementary colors stimulate the same photoreceptors simultaneously, the brain struggles to differentiate them, rendering the combination nearly indistinguishable.
In 1983, scientists Hewitt Crane and Thomas Piantanida conducted a clever experiment. Volunteers stared at adjacent red‑green or blue‑yellow stripes while an eye‑tracker forced each eye to focus on a single color. Over time, the eyes blended the hues, producing a new, indescribable shade. Participants struggled to name the color, as language lacked a term. A 2006 follow‑up by Dartmouth researchers led by Po‑Jang Hsieh gave volunteers a color‑mapper; many described the red‑green blend as a muddy brown, coining the term “mud.”
1 Gamboge Yellow
During the 1600s, the British East India Company imported a vivid yellow pigment from Southeast Asia, christening it “gamboge” after the historic name for Cambodia, Camoboja. The dye originated from the sap of mature trees, harvested after a decade of growth, then dried into powder or solid “rocks” that could be re‑wet for painting. While the sap itself was poisonous, gamboge also suffered from poor lightfastness, fading quickly and making it difficult for artists to preserve its brilliance over time.
In the mid‑1800s, a charlatan named James Morrison marketed “Morrison’s vegetable pills” made from gamboge, promoting them as a powerful diuretic and laxative. Physicians quickly recognized the sap’s irritant properties and its potential lethality in small doses. Decades later, a Winsor & Newton employee discovered a bullet embedded in a gamboge pigment sample, later traced to the Khmer Rouge’s killing fields, adding a grim historical layer to the color’s legacy. In 2005, Winsor & Newton retired the toxic version, replacing it with a safer synthetic alternative dubbed “New Gamboge.”
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