The seven chakras and their colours

Root to crown — the colour chart, what each one governs, and what it looks like when it is not working.

The seven, and what is paired with them: root chakra, sacral chakra, solar plexus chakra, heart chakra, throat chakra, third eye chakra, crown chakra, aura colours, crystals and chakras in the destiny matrix.

Chakra Colours and Meanings: All Seven, Root to Crown
#ChakraSanskritColourLocation
1 Root Muladhara Red Base of the spine
2 Sacral Svadhisthana Orange Lower abdomen
3 Solar Plexus Manipura Yellow Upper abdomen
4 Heart Anahata Green Centre of the chest
5 Throat Vishuddha Blue Throat
6 Third Eye Ajna Indigo Between the eyebrows
7 Crown Sahasrara Violet or white Top of the head

Counted across 62 stone assignments

The colours, and where the stones stop matching them

The colours run in spectrum order — red at the base of the spine to violet at the top of the head — and that order is what most charts show. It is worth knowing that the tidy spectrum is a modern arrangement: the classical Sanskrit descriptions give lotus colours that do not run in rainbow order, and translations of them differ.

Colour is also how stones get assigned to a chakra, though not as reliably as the trade suggests. Our reference carries 62 chakra assignments across 43 stones, and in 39 of them the stone’s own colour is the colour of the chakra — 63%. It holds completely at the throat (8 of 8) and falls apart at the third eye, where only 1 of 10 match.

The reason is that indigo is a colour almost nothing is sold in: the stones offered for the third eye are purple or plain blue, and get placed there on reputation rather than on their colour. Where a colour is common — blue at the throat, green at the heart — the pairing is tidy.

Root 6 of 11 stones are that colour · Garnet, Bloodstone, Ruby, Spinel
Sacral 2 of 4 stones are that colour · Carnelian, Amber
Solar Plexus 6 of 7 stones are that colour · Peridot, Topaz, Citrine, Amber
Heart 8 of 13 stones are that colour · Bloodstone, Emerald, Alexandrite, Peridot
Throat 8 of 8 stones are that colour · Aquamarine, Sapphire, Topaz, Turquoise
Third Eye 1 of 10 stones are that colour · Lapis Lazuli
Crown 8 of 9 stones are that colour · Amethyst, Diamond, Pearl, Opal

1 · Muladhara · Earth

Root

Governs safety, survival and belonging.

Balanced. Grounded, secure, able to rest without scanning for threat.

Blocked. Anxiety about money and safety, restlessness, feeling you have no place.

2 · Svadhisthana · Water

Sacral

Governs pleasure, creativity and emotional flow.

Balanced. Able to enjoy things without guilt and to create without an audience.

Blocked. Numbness, creative block, or the opposite — appetite used as anaesthetic.

3 · Manipura · Fire

Solar Plexus

Governs will, confidence and personal power.

Balanced. Able to decide and to hold a boundary without escalating.

Blocked. Indecision, people-pleasing, or control exercised over small things.

4 · Anahata · Air

Heart

Governs love, compassion and connection.

Balanced. Open without being porous. Able to give and to receive.

Blocked. Guardedness, resentment, or giving until there is nothing left.

5 · Vishuddha · Ether

Throat

Governs expression and truth.

Balanced. Says the thing accurately, at the time it needs saying.

Blocked. Swallowed words, or talking constantly to avoid saying anything.

6 · Ajna · Light

Third Eye

Governs insight, intuition and perspective.

Balanced. Trusts its own read of a situation without needing it confirmed.

Blocked. Overthinking, or dismissing what you noticed because you cannot justify it.

7 · Sahasrara · Thought

Crown

Governs meaning and connection to something larger.

Balanced. A working sense that life has shape, held without dogma.

Blocked. Cynicism, or spiritual certainty used as a way to stop asking.

What the chakra system is

The seven-chakra model comes from Indian tantric traditions documented from around the eighth century, and reached the West largely through a 1919 translation by John Woodroffe. There is no anatomical structure at these locations and no measurable energy field.

What it does provide is a map for locating feeling in the body — and people are remarkably consistent about where they feel things. Anxiety sits in the stomach, grief in the chest, unspoken words in the throat. A vocabulary for that is useful whatever you think about energy.