Short answer
Munsell orders surface colours by three visually judged dimensions — hue, value (lightness) and chroma — each divided into steps meant to look equal. Albert Munsell published the notation in 1905 and an atlas in 1915; in 1943 an Optical Society of America committee re-spaced it by experiment and tied it to CIE coordinates, and that renotation is what Munsell specifications mean today. It survives because its spacing came from people's judgements rather than a formula, which makes it a benchmark for other spaces and a practical language in fields such as soil science and art education.
Munsell arranged hues in a circle of five principal hues — red, yellow, green, blue and purple — with five intermediates between them (yellow-red, green-yellow and so on), each subdivided into ten steps, so 5R is the middle of red and 10R borders yellow-red. Value runs from 0 for ideal black to 10 for ideal white. Chroma measures departure from grey and has no fixed maximum: it extends as far as available pigments allow, which differs by hue and value, so the Munsell solid is lopsided rather than a sphere. A colour is written hue value/chroma, for example 5R 4/14 for a strong mid-red.
Munsell chose five principal hues rather than three or four partly to keep the notation decimal, and he insisted that steps in each dimension should look equal rather than follow pigment mixing. That was a radical break from colour circles based on painters' primaries. The idea is the same one CIELAB and OKLab pursue with equations: a space in which distance tracks visible difference. Munsell's version was built from physical samples judged by eye, which makes it a reference dataset against which formula-based spaces have long been tested.
The original samples were not perfectly spaced, and the pigments varied between editions. In the late 1930s an Optical Society of America subcommittee organised extensive visual estimates of the spacing, and its 1943 final report by Newhall, Nickerson and Judd re-specified every Munsell hue, value and chroma in terms of CIE chromaticity and luminance under Illuminant C, extending the solid to colours not in the book. Since then, a Munsell notation is effectively a label for a colorimetric specification, and physical Munsell samples are made to match it.
Munsell notation remains standard in soil description, where field workers compare soil with Munsell chips, and appears in archaeology, geology, food and some product specifications. Art and design education uses it to teach value and chroma as separate ideas from hue. Converting between Munsell and screen colour needs interpolation of the renotation data, not a simple formula, and the result depends on the illuminant assumed; Colourwise does not compute Munsell values for that reason. Printed Munsell books and chips are commercial products, and their colour data is not reproduced here.
| Part of 5R 4/14 | Dimension | Scale | Meaning here |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5R | Hue | 10 hue families × 10 steps | Middle of the red family |
| 4 | Value | 0 (black) to 10 (white) | Somewhat darker than middle grey |
| 14 | Chroma | 0 (grey) upwards, no fixed maximum | Strongly chromatic |
Each statement is labelled by kind — established fact, a standard’s requirement, observed market data, a convention, or Colourwise’s own interpretation or analysis — with the strength of the evidence behind it.
FactModerate evidence
Albert H. Munsell published 'A Color Notation' in 1905, describing colours by hue, value and chroma.
Source: A Color Notation (A. H. Munsell, 1905), Project Gutenberg edition
FactModerate evidence
The Atlas of the Munsell Color System was published in 1915 and the Munsell Book of Color in 1929.
Caveat: Dates from a reference work rather than a primary record.
Source: Munsell color system (Wikipedia)
FactStrong evidence
The 1943 final report of the Optical Society of America subcommittee (Newhall, Nickerson and Judd) re-spaced Munsell hue, value and chroma from visual estimates and expressed them in CIE terms under Illuminant C.
Source: Final Report of the O.S.A. Subcommittee on the Spacing of the Munsell Colors
FactModerate evidence
Munsell uses five principal and five intermediate hues, a value scale from 0 (black) to 10 (white), and an open-ended chroma scale.
Source: A Color Notation (A. H. Munsell, 1905), Project Gutenberg edition; Munsell color system (Wikipedia)
Reviewed 29 September 2026. Colourwise summarises its sources in its own words and does not reproduce standards text or proprietary colour data. Spotted an error? Tell us.