Colors

Colors is are the very important in our lives, The change our mood, rule our behavior (traffic light), symbolize things (red symbolize danger), symbolic associations (wearing black is mourning) and so on. That's why the topic of colors is very important.

Colors in Japan
Historically, Japanese had different color perceptions. They made no clear distinction between blue and green, and the tendency to call green things blue persists in a number of cases today, such as that stoplights are said to turn blue, not green. Japanese children drawing the sun in red colors and the proverb: "the shoemaker's children go barefoot" in Japanese will sound like  "the dyer wears white" 紺屋の白袴 [ こうやのしろばかま ].

Colors
The word color in Japanese is iro (いろ).
The four oldest colors of Japan (mentioned in its' history) are:

aka	(あか)	red
kuro	(くろ)	black
shiro	(しろ)	white
ao	(あお)	blue

Only these four colors can be prefixed with ma (ま), meaning "pure", "genuine", to give us:

makka	(まっあか)	bright red
makkuro	(まっくろ)	pitch black
masshiro	(まっしろ)	pure white
massao	(まっあお)	deep blue

If we add the color     kiiro (きいろ) yellow, to the other four, we will get a group of colors which are all i-adjectives. That means, if you want to say that something is some color you put the color after the subject. But if you say something about the colored thing, you should write the color before that thing and add i (い) after it:

くるまはあかです。The car is red.
あかいくるま。        A red car.

Other colors
Here some other colors (they follow different rules):

kon	(こん)	dark blue
midori	(みどり)	dark green
murasaki	(むらさき)	violet/purple
mizuiro	(みずいろ)	light blue (misu - water)
chairo	(ちゃいろ)	brown (cha - tea)
haiiro	(はいいろ)	grey (hai - ash)
nezumiiro	(ねずみいろ)	grey (nezumi - mouse)
daidaiiro	(だいだいいろ)	orange (daidai - bitter orange)
momoiro	(ももいろ)	pink (momo - peach)
kin'iro	(きんいろ)	gold (kin - gold)
gin'iro	(ぎんいろ)	silver (gin - silver)

The rule for these colors is:
くるまはみどりです。The car is green.
みどりのくるま。        A green car.

Colors from English
The colors which came from other languages written in Katakana, but have the same rules for them like the other colors.

orenji	(オレンジ)	orange
pinku	(ピンク)	pink

Links
For more Japanese colors you can visit this page.
For the expended table of colors you can visit wiki.
A game for learning the colors is here.