These are 15 of the rarest colours on Earth – and where they come from

Any goths or Halloween enthusiasts in your life will want to know about Vantablack, the blackest black in the world. It was invented by an English company called Surrey NanoSystems, and it’s an acronym: Vertically Aligned Nano Tube Arrays (VANTA).

For the non-engineers among us, that means it’s synthetic and made from carbon nanotubes that are vertically aligned at such density that 99.965% of visible light is absorbed. It’s only in use in three places in the world: the aerospace sector, the defence sector and with the artist Anish Kapoor. Kapoor signed a contract in 2014 securing exclusive rights to use Vantablack in his work. That definitely makes it the rarest colour in the art world!

In 2009, a graduate student in chemistry at Oregon State University named Andrew Smith was messing around in the lab when he accidentally invented a new colour – a bright, brilliant blue that was the first new blue shade in two hundred years. YInMn blue is rare because it’s made by heating manganese oxide to around 2,000 degrees. It’s a gorgeous purple-blue shade that almost seems to glow.

The nearly unpronounceable name comes from its composition. The pigment contains the elements yttrium, indium, manganese and oxygen, hence YInMn. But Oregon State scientists simply call it “MasBlue,” after scientist Mas Subramanian, who was leading the research team that included Smith.

You may have gleaned that some rare colours come with a side of danger, and gamboge yellow is no different. Also known as rattan, wisteria yellow, gummi gatti and drop gum, gamboge yellow comes from Cambodia and is harvested as sap from a tree, dried and ground into dust. That dust happens to be a powerful diuretic and laxative at even small doses.

Its historical usage as a paint colour is hard to determine – as gamboge does not last very long – but it was used widely in Chinese painting and can also be seen in some of Rembrandt’s paintings. However, the place you’re most likely to see gamboge yellow today is in Buddhist monks’ robes. The deep saffron colour is the traditional hue for the robes of Theravada Buddhist monks.

Getting itchy feet to travel? Check out these manmade marvels in Southeast Asia.

Also known as “drunk-tank pink”, this bubblegum shade was purported to have a calming effect on incarcerated people. In the late 1970s, a naval correctional institute in Seattle started painting their prison cells pink on the basis that the colour reduces violent and aggressive behaviour. The colour was then named Baker-Miller pink after the institute’s directors, and the Navy found that pink did indeed soothe the prisoners. Since then, the colour has found its way onto the walls of youth clinics, psychiatric wards and jail cells, although subsequent studies have found that the calming effect may only last for up to 30 minutes.

If this pink colour doesn’t calm you for long enough, try looking at these25 calming pictures.

Before there was ultramarine or cobalt (seen in the most colourful cities in the world), one of the most common sources of the colour blue in the ancient world was the humble woad plant. Woad is native to the Mediterranean and has been used as a dye since the Neolithic era. Woad gets its blue tone from a compound called indigotin, the same pigment that’s found in indigo plants.

There was a myth that the ancient Celtic people of Scotland and England painted themselves blue with woad before entering battle, but that has been disproven. Woad produces a gorgeous blue colour that can be used to dye yarn or fabric. Woad blue is one of the rarest colours today (due to the popularity of synthetics over plant-based dyes), but can still be found in craft circles.

It may sound delicious, but you definitely wouldn’t want to add cinnabar to your food. The word cinnabar comes from the Arabic word zinjafr, meaning “dragon’s blood”. It’s an accurate name, given that cinnabar is formed in volcanos. You might know this fiery rare colour by another name: vermilion. Cinnabar has yet another moniker, but this one is more deadly: mercury sulphide, the primary ore of mercury. Luckily, cinnabar is not dangerous as long as it’s not heated (it releases a toxic vapour) or ground up and inhaled. In pigment form, this gorgeous rich colour ranges from reddish-orange to a reddish-purple. It’s been used in cultures all over the world for centuries for decorating stoneware, pottery, furniture, in artwork and as a cosmetic.

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Source: RD.com