Liturgical Colours by Season and Tradition: A Comparative Chart

There is no single chart of liturgical colours by denomination, because there is no single authority. The Roman Catholic Church prescribes its colours in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. The Church of England suggests them and says in the same breath that they are not mandatory. The Episcopal Church has no authorised rubric on the subject at all. Lutheran and Methodist bodies publish guidance, not law. What follows is the side-by-side table, and then the handful of places where the four traditions genuinely part company rather than merely use different words for the same thing.

Liturgical colours by denomination: the season-by-season chart

Read the table as four columns of custom, not four columns of rule. Where a cell gives two colours, both are in current use in that tradition and neither is an error.

Season or occasion	Roman Catholic	Anglican / Episcopal	Lutheran (ELCA and LCMS)	Methodist (UMC)
Advent	Violet	Purple or violet; blue as an alternative	Blue in both bodies’ published notes; purple still widely used	Purple or blue
Advent 3 (Gaudete)	Rose, where it is the practice	Rose, sometimes	Rose rare; blue or purple continues	Rose in some congregations; not in the denominational glossary
Christmastide	White (gold or silver permitted on more solemn occasions in the United States)	White, with gold kept for the great festivals where a church owns two white sets	White; gold suggested for Christmas Day and Easter Day	White (gold in practice)
Epiphany (the feast)	White	White	White	White
Weeks after Epiphany	Green (Ordinary Time)	Green	Green; white on Transfiguration, the last Sunday of the season	Green, with white on the first and last Sundays of the season
Ordinary Time / after Pentecost / after Trinity	Green	Green	Green	Green
Ash Wednesday	Violet	Purple, or the Lent array	Purple preferred in ELCA guidance, black historically; LCMS names black	Purple
Lent	Violet	Purple, or a Lent array of unbleached linen from Ash Wednesday to the day before Palm Sunday	Purple	Purple
Lent 4 (Laetare)	Rose, where it is the practice	Rose, sometimes	Rose rare	Rose in some congregations
Passiontide (Lent 5 onward)	Violet; crosses and images may be veiled	Red from Palm Sunday; array or purple before it	Purple, then scarlet in Holy Week	Purple, then red in Holy Week
Palm Sunday	Red	Red	Scarlet	Red
Monday to Wednesday in Holy Week	Violet	Red	Scarlet or purple	Red
Maundy Thursday	White (also at the Chrism Mass)	White at the Communion	Scarlet or white	White or red
Good Friday	Red	Red, or hangings removed	Black in LCMS guidance; ELCA strips the church and vests nothing after the stripping of the altar	Black or red
Holy Saturday and the Easter Vigil	No Mass by day; white or gold at the Vigil	Hangings removed by day; white or gold at the Vigil	Bare by day; white or gold at the Vigil	Bare by day; white at the Vigil
Eastertide	White	White or gold	White; gold on Easter Day	White until Pentecost
Pentecost	Red	Red	Red	Red
Trinity Sunday	White	White	White	White
All Saints	White	White; red may then be used from All Saints to the eve of Advent	White in common practice	White
Reformation Sunday	Not observed	Not observed	Red in both bodies	Not generally observed
Christ the King / Last Sunday before Advent	White	Red or white (the Church of England permits red through the weeks before Advent)	White; LCMS guidance suggests gold	White
Funerals and Masses for the dead	Violet, white or black	Purple recommended, but white or black may be preferred; white at the funeral of a child	White	White
Weddings	White, or a festive colour	White	White	White
Ordinations	White, or a festive colour	Red is suitable; white also used	Red	Red
Marian feasts	White (blue only under an old regional privilege)	White; blue used in some Anglo-Catholic parishes	White	White
Martyrs’ days	Red	Red	Red	Red

Two honest caveats about that table. First, the Roman column is the only one drawn from a binding text: GIRM 346, with the adaptations approved for the dioceses of the United States. Second, several cells in the other three columns record what parishes do rather than what a book says, because the books are silent. Where the guidance is published we have followed it; where it is not, we have said so in the cell.

Are there five liturgical colours, six or seven?

All three answers are defensible, which is why the question keeps being asked.

Five is the historic Roman canon: white, red, green, violet and black. The sequence goes back to Innocent III’s treatise De sacro altaris mysterio, written before his election in 1198, and the missal of Pius V in 1570 fixed it, with rose added on two Sundays. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia states the result plainly: in the Roman rite, since Pius V, the colours are five in number.

Six is five plus rose, which is how most people count when they are working out what a sacristy needs.

Seven is six plus gold, treated as a colour in its own right rather than as a more precious substitute for white.

Lutheran counting goes further again. The LCMS Commission on Worship essay on the colours of the liturgical seasons works with eight: blue, green, black, gold, scarlet, purple, white and red. Scarlet as a colour distinct from Pentecost red is the addition an outsider is most likely to miss, and it matters — a Lutheran altar guild ordering “red” for Holy Week when the calendar says scarlet has bought the wrong cloth.

Advent is where the traditions part first

Violet is the Roman norm and always has been; GIRM 346 gives Advent and Lent the same colour and makes no provision for blue. Blue is normal in much of the Episcopal Church, is named ahead of purple in both the ELCA’s and the LCMS’s own published notes, and appears alongside purple in the United Methodist glossary of liturgical colours, which gives “Advent, purple or blue”. The Church of England’s Rules to Order the Christian Year describe the Advent colour as “purple (which may vary from ‘Roman purple’ to violet, with blue as an alternative)” — and say of the whole scheme that the colours “are not mandatory and traditional or local use may be followed”.

The historical justification usually offered for blue — that it was the colour of the medieval Use of Sarum — is contested, and seriously so. We have set out the evidence on both sides, and what a parish should actually buy, in the article on the violet-or-blue question in Advent.

Holy Week: red, scarlet, violet and nothing at all

This is the second real divergence, and it is sharper than Advent because the traditions differ day by day rather than shade by shade.

The Roman rite keeps violet on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week, having used red on Palm Sunday. The Church of England uses red for the whole of Holy Week except at the Maundy Thursday Communion, when white is used. Lutheran practice introduces scarlet — a deeper, bluer red than Pentecost red — from Palm Sunday. Methodist practice generally uses red across the week.

Good Friday divides them again. Rome wears red. The LCMS names black. ELCA congregations strip the church and use nothing after the altar is stripped on Maundy Thursday. Anglican practice ranges from red to bare wood, depending on churchmanship rather than on province.

The Lenten array

The Lent array is unbleached linen or sackcloth, usually with orphreys in oxblood or dull crimson, used in place of purple through Lent and paired with veils of the same cloth over crosses and images. It is an English custom, revived by the Alcuin Club and by Percy Dearmer’s circle in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it is provided for in the Church of England’s rules — but only from Ash Wednesday until the day before Palm Sunday, after which red takes over.

It is not a Roman option. A Roman Catholic parish wanting the same visual austerity uses a plain violet set and the Missal’s permission to veil crosses and images from the Fifth Sunday of Lent. Nor is the array cheap: it is a complete additional set, in a cloth that shows every mark, used for five weeks a year.

Gold, and the “more precious” rule

Gold is not a season’s colour in the Roman rite. It is covered by a different provision: GIRM 346g allows that “on more solemn days, festive, that is, more precious, sacred vestments may be used even if not of the colour of the day”, and for the United States a further clause adds that “the colors gold or silver may be worn on more solemn occasions”. That is a permission about preciousness, not about hue — a heavily embroidered white set is as much within the rule as a cloth-of-gold one.

The Church of England reaches the same place by a different route: where a church has two sets of white, “one may be kept for great festivals indicated as ‘gold'”. Lutheran guidance treats gold more like a proper colour, suggesting it for Easter Day, Christmas Day and, in the LCMS, for Christ the King.

The practical consequence for a sacristy is that gold never substitutes for green, violet or black. It substitutes for white, and occasionally for red.

All Saints, the Kingdom season and Reformation Sunday

These three occasions have no common answer because two of the four traditions do not keep all of them.

All Saints is white everywhere it is kept. What follows it differs: the Church of England permits red from All Saints’ Day to the eve of Advent, with green as the alternative, which is why an English parish may look festal for a month while a Roman parish next door stays green until Christ the King.

Reformation Sunday is red, and is a Lutheran observance. It is not in the Roman calendar and is not in the Anglican or Methodist calendars as a red-letter day, though individual congregations mark it.

Rose on two Sundays

Rose is permitted, not required, on the Third Sunday of Advent and the Fourth Sunday of Lent, and the Roman wording is careful: “where it is the practice.” It is a lightened violet, not pink, and the distinction is worth holding on to when you are ordering cloth. The two rose Sundays and what to do if you own no rose set are covered separately, including the arithmetic on whether a set used twice a year can be justified.

Funerals, weddings, ordinations and Marian feasts

Occasional services follow a different logic from the seasons: the colour attaches to the rite, and in the Roman rite the seasonal colour can be displaced by it.

Funerals are the largest disagreement in the whole chart and are treated in full in the piece on choosing between black, violet and white for a requiem. In short: the Roman rite permits all three in the United States, the Church of England recommends purple while allowing white or black and directs white at a child’s funeral, and Lutheran and Methodist practice is white.

Weddings are white almost universally. Ordinations divide: the Roman rite treats an ordination as a ritual Mass, celebrated in its proper colour, in white, or in a festive colour, while the Church of England’s rules make red “appropriate for any services which focus on the gift of the Holy Spirit, and… therefore suitable for Baptism, Confirmation and Ordination”. Lutheran and Methodist ordinations are usually red for the same reason.

Marian feasts are white. Blue is not a Roman option for them: it exists only under an old regional privilege granted to Spain and its former territories for the Immaculate Conception, and to a handful of shrines. Some Anglo-Catholic parishes use blue for Marian feasts as a matter of parish custom, which is a different thing from a permission.

Choir dress does not change colour

This is the single most common error in published colour charts. Choir dress — cassock, surplice, tippet or scarf, and academic hood — does not follow the liturgical seasons. The scarf is black whatever the day is, and it is not a stole; the hood is the colour of the wearer’s degree, not the season’s. Church of England Canon B 8 speaks of “a surplice or alb with scarf or stole”, and the choice between scarf and stole is a choice between two different kinds of vesture, not two colours of the same thing. The difference is set out in the piece on how a tippet differs from a stole.

The same point applies in reverse to paraments. Altar frontals, pulpit and lectern falls, burse and veil follow the season; the fair linen does not.

What a parish actually needs to own

Working from the chart, in the order most parishes buy:

1. Green. Worn on more Sundays than everything else combined. Buy the best cloth you can afford here, not for the festal set.
2. White. Christmas, Easter, Trinity, All Saints, weddings, and in most non-Roman traditions funerals as well.
3. Violet or purple. Advent, Lent, and — depending on tradition — requiems.
4. Red. Palm Sunday, Good Friday in the Roman rite, Pentecost, martyrs, ordinations, Reformation Sunday.
5. Blue, if your tradition uses it for Advent. This is a fifth set, not a substitute for violet, unless you have decided to stop using violet in Advent altogether.
6. Gold or a second white, for the great festivals.
7. Rose, two Sundays a year.
8. Black, if you keep requiems in black or mark All Souls.
9. Scarlet, in Lutheran practice, for Holy Week.

Before ordering, decide whether you are buying a chasuble and stole only or a full set with paraments and a burse and veil — the difference in cost is large, and what counts as a set of three, four or five pieces varies by maker. It is also worth checking which garments in your parish actually take the seasonal colour at all, which the guide to who wears which garment covers. Our own liturgical colour guide lists the shades we cut in.

Common questions

Is there an official chart of liturgical colours for all denominations?

No, and there cannot be, because only one of these traditions legislates the matter. The Roman Catholic Church prescribes colours in GIRM 346. The Church of England publishes suggestions and states that they are not mandatory. The Episcopal Church has no authorised rubric on colour at all. Lutheran and Methodist bodies publish worship guidance rather than binding rules.

Can a Roman Catholic parish use blue for Advent?

No. GIRM 346 gives violet for Advent and does not list blue among the colours of the Roman rite. Blue vestments exist in the Roman rite only under a regional privilege for the Immaculate Conception, granted to Spain and its former territories, and by particular grant to certain shrines. Rose on Gaudete Sunday is the only permitted departure from violet in Advent.

What is the difference between red and scarlet?

In Lutheran usage they are two colours with two jobs. Pentecost red is a bright, orange-leaning red standing for fire. Scarlet is deeper and bluer, associated with blood and the Passion, and is used from Palm Sunday through Holy Week. Roman, Anglican and Methodist practice generally uses one red for both.

Does gold replace white or is it its own colour?

In the Roman rite it replaces white, and it does so under the “more precious vestments” permission rather than as a colour of the day. Anglican practice is the same in effect: a second white set kept for great festivals. Lutheran guidance comes closest to treating gold as a colour in its own right, suggesting it for Easter Day, Christmas Day and Christ the King.

Do the paraments have to match the chasuble exactly?

They should read as the same colour from the back of the nave, which is not the same as matching in the hand. Dye lots move, silk and polyester take dye differently, and a frontal bought ten years after the chasuble will rarely match under close inspection. Order altar hangings and vestments together where you can, and from the same cloth where the piece count allows it. Ordering the frontal and falls from the same bolt as the chasuble is the only reliable way to make them read as one colour.

Before you order

Three checks that save the most trouble. Confirm which calendar your parish actually follows — a Methodist congregation using the Revised Common Lectionary and a Roman parish will not change colour on the same Sundays after Epiphany. Confirm whether your tradition distinguishes red from scarlet, because that determines whether Holy Week needs its own set. And measure the frontal before ordering hangings: altars vary far more than chasubles do, and a frontal cut to the wrong depth cannot be let out.

Sources

• USCCB — General Instruction of the Roman Missal, Chapter VI (GIRM 345-347)
• Church of England — Rules to Order the Christian Year (Common Worship)
• LCMS Commission on Worship — The Colors of the Liturgical Seasons
• The United Methodist Church — Glossary: colors, liturgical
• Britannica — Church year: Liturgical colours