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I read here that there is a general rule to write an adjective order. But I didn't find any explanation if the rule has a specific order for colours, especially for primary colours.
This may sound stupid but I'm just wondering. I mean is it preferable to say:
red and white flowers
Or:
white and red flowers
Or is there really no grammatical rule to obey?
I mean is it preferable to say:
red and white flowers Or:
white and red flowers
Or is there really no grammatical rule to obey?
No, there is no rule, you can use any order you like:
"There were white, red, purple and pale-blue flowers on the table" is correct with any permutations of the colours
In a corpus of about 1.5 million words of poetry I found 214 instances of conjoined colours, where the colours were the 12 commonest colour terms in the U.S. frequency dictionary. Red and white occurred 12 times, and white and red 10 times. A 12 by 12 chart of all the possibilities exhibited a roughly symmetrical pattern of results with one exception: green and gold/en occurred 26 times (the highest total of all possible combinations), but only 4 instances of gold/en and green.
From Mari-Lou and Ralph's point on dominance/prominence, I'd probably be more inclined to say black and white cat, e.g. for this fella:
But white & black cat here:
If the mixture is equal, I'd probably use either order; though with something like black & white, I'd naturally go towards more common phrasing (e.g. we have black & white films/photographs, so that's feel more natural through use rather than a specific rule).
In common speech, black and red seem to be dominant: Christmas colors are red and green. The US flag is red, white, and blue. The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. Zebras and penquins are black and white. We write things down in black and white. Opposites are black and white. Bruises are black and blue. The War of the Roses involved red and white roses. Ask people what color these things are, and the colors will almost always be given in the same order. Silver seems to be dominant over gold: silver threads among the gold, London Bridge is fallinng down...build it up with silver and gold. These color orders are not a rule of grammar, but they definitely do constitute a shibboleth. (Saying it "wrong" brands you as an outsider.)
I hope this helps. When it comes to using more than one colour to describe a noun, it is very unusual to use more than two, with the exception of certain industries which rely on description such as the fashion industry. But otherwise, it would sound odd if someone used more than two colours.
With the exception of "black and white", which seems to be a social agreement that that is the right order to say them, it doesn't matter which order you place the colour adjectives as long as you have a conjunction separating them.
It has nothing to do with grammar, it is a question of usage. As it happens, ‘red and white’ is much more common nowadays than ‘white and red’, as illustrated by this Google ngram.
For whatever reason there is a tendency to put white second, as similar, though less marked, patterns are seen for ‘blue and white’ and ‘green and white’. Perhaps a mental association with the position of white in ‘black and white’.
Further ngraming shows red to be dominant over blue, green or yellow, but blue and green to be equivalent and although other combinations show biases, these are less marked.
