Sunset colors in order

What are the colors of a sunset, in order?

From the horizon upward on a clear evening you see a bright yellow or white band, then orange, then red or salmon, then pink, then a purple or violet band that fades into blue. The warm colors sit lowest because that light has traveled through the most air. The cool colors sit highest because the sky overhead is looking at less-reddened light.

Painters and photographers often use this stack as a recipe: four to six bands, soft transitions, the darkest color at the top.

Why do the colors appear in this order?

When the sun is low, sunlight passes through a long path of atmosphere. Air molecules scatter the shorter wavelengths, blue and green, so the beam that reaches you is stripped of them and leaves the orange and red. Wikipedia explains that the removal of shorter wavelengths comes from Rayleigh scattering, while cloud droplets and larger particles light up the reddened beam through Mie scattering (Wikipedia: Sunset).

Our guide to why sunsets are red walks through the full physics. The short version is that the lower in the sky you look, the redder the light that reaches that part of the atmosphere.

Which color is strongest, and when?

The brightest oranges often appear just before the sun disappears. The deepest reds and pinks often show a few minutes after, when clouds higher up still catch light that the ground has lost. That is why a sunset can look dull at the moment the sun touches the horizon and spectacular ten minutes later.

Stay through the sequence. If you leave at sunset, you see only the first act.

What do clouds do to the order?

Clouds act as a screen. High and mid-level clouds catch the red light and glow in the same order as the sky behind them, with the underside lit orange or pink. Low clouds near the horizon often stay dark because the sun is no longer reaching them. A thick gray layer overhead can blank the whole show.

The article on what clouds make the best sunsets sorts the types by how well they glow.

What about the sky opposite the sun?

Turn around. After sunset, the east often shows a band of pink above a blue-gray strip, the Belt of Venus, with the dark band of Earth's shadow beneath it (Wikipedia: Belt of Venus). It is easy to miss because everyone faces the other way. We explain it in why the sky turns pink at sunset.

How can I paint or edit these colors?

Start from the stack. For a painting, put the darkest blue at the top, glaze violet and rose beneath it, then orange and a pale yellow at the horizon. For a photo, avoid pushing saturation so far that the bands blur into a single orange. A gradient with five or six steps looks more natural than two bright colors.

If you want exact values from a photo, see the list of sunset color palette hex codes.

How does Afterhue record this order?

When you photograph a sunset, Afterhue reads five colors from the photo and orders them by where they sit in the picture, top of the sky first. A Hue Chip then reads the way the sky did, with the deep blues or purples first and the warm horizon colors last. A silhouette of the horizon is kept as the dark color if it covers enough of the frame.

What colors should I expect over the sea or a lake?

Water repeats the stack upside down. A calm surface mirrors the sky, so the oranges and reds near the horizon show twice, once in the sky and once on the water, with a soft blur where waves break the reflection. The result is richer than the sky on its own, which is why people chase sunsets at the coast. On land the equivalent is a wet road, a pond or a glass facade.

Why does the same sunset look different on my phone?

Phone cameras compress a wide range of brightness, and they apply local contrast and color boosts that vary by model and mode. A subtle band of peach can turn into orange, and a pale violet can become a hard purple. If the colors matter to you, lower the exposure a little when shooting, as described in the guide to photographing a sunset with an iPhone, and compare the result with what you saw.

How do I remember the order?

A short rule works. Warm at the bottom, cool at the top, and the whole stack gets darker as you look up. Then add time: gold, orange, red, pink, violet, blue. If you can say that sequence, you can predict what the sky will do next, and you can plan which direction to face for each part of the evening.

• Facing the sun: orange, red, then yellow glow fading.
• Facing away: pink band, then a blue-gray strip, then the dark of Earth's shadow.
• Overhead: clouds lit from below in pink and rose.

Do sunrises use the same colors?

Mostly yes. The physics is the same, only reversed in time. Wikipedia notes that sunset colors are typically more brilliant than sunrise colors, because evening air contains more particles than morning air (Wikipedia: Sunset). Sunrises tend to look cooler and cleaner. We compare them in sunrise or sunset: which is better.