There is no single lucky colour worldwide — different cultures and regions traditionally associate different colours with luck, and these associations vary even within a single country.
Red is traditionally associated with luck, prosperity and celebration in Chinese culture, prominently used at weddings and during Lunar New Year.
Chinese
Gold and yellow are traditionally associated with wealth, prosperity and good fortune in many East and South Asian cultures, including Chinese and Indian traditions.
East and South Asia
Green is traditionally considered a lucky colour in Ireland, closely tied to national identity and folklore, and is prominently worn on St Patrick's Day.
Irish
In some Western traditions, four-leaf clovers and the colour green are associated with luck specifically through this folklore, rather than green being universally lucky.
Western
Luck is a belief about outcomes, so there are two separate things to look for. One is practice: what people in a named place wear, give or keep on a particular occasion, as recorded by a museum or a heritage body. The other is outcome: whether anything measurable differs when the colour is present. The two rarely meet. Records of practice tend to attach good fortune to an occasion, an object or a motif more often than to a hue alone, and the one colour whose effect on results has been tested at scale, red in combat sports, turned out on fuller evidence to make no significant difference. A list of lucky colours by country leaves out both of these points. 1, 2, 3
Each row applies only to the tradition, place and period named in it, on the authority named in it.
| Tradition | Where | When | According to | What is recorded | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spring festival (traditional new year) | China | inscribed by UNESCO in 2024 | UNESCO Representative List entry | The festival's practices are described as ways to usher in the new year and pray for good fortune: cleaning the home, family meals on New Year's Eve, new clothes, offerings to heaven, earth and ancestors, and greetings to elders. The entry speaks of festival decorations but does not prescribe a colour. | 1 |
| Gujarati Hindu wedding dress, as worn by one bride | North-west London; saris bought in Gujarat | 31 October 1998 | Victoria and Albert Museum | A red and gold gharchola sari given by the groom's parents was decorated with tie-dyed elephants and peacocks, which the museum describes as symbols of good luck. The fortune is carried by the motifs, on a red and gold ground. | 2 |
| Shinto wedding dress | Japan | garment made 1980–2000 | Victoria and Albert Museum | A bride's red outer kimono is woven with cranes, an auspicious motif that the museum glosses as a symbol of longevity. Here too the stated meaning belongs to the bird, not to the red. | 4 |
| Victorian mourning etiquette | Great Britain | 19th century | Victoria and Albert Museum | It was believed unlucky to keep black mourning crêpe in the house once mourning had ended, which is one reason so little of the fabric survives. This is a belief about an object with a use, not about black in general. | 5 |
| Olympic and world-championship combat sports | International competition | 1996–2021 | Peperkoorn and colleagues, Scientific Reports (2024) | Across 6,589 bouts, competitors wearing red won 50.5% of the time, which is not a statistically significant edge. An earlier report of a red advantage held only for close contests before 2005. | 3, 6 |
Generalisation: Every culture has its lucky colour.
Evidence: Not what the comparative research finds. A 30-nation study of colour and emotion found associations broadly shared across countries, with national differences layered on top, and an eight-country marketing study likewise reported both shared and divergent meanings. Neither supports a table with one fortunate colour per nation, and the museum records above tie good fortune to motifs and occasions. 7, 8
Every claim above is scoped by the specific culture, region and/or period it applies to — none of these associations are presented as universal. See pigment and dye history for more.