Why Playing Card Suits Chose Red and Black Instead of the Four-Colour Deck

By now, everyone is used to the instantly recognisable French card suits and their red-and-black colour scheme. However, in the past, it was common for playing cards to use more varied colours, and unique colours for each suit. This changed when French card designs became the norm – we’ve explained why below.

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The History of Colourful Cards

If you didn’t know already, modern playing cards share their origin with tarot cards. As such, they were always sporting ornate designs and, when it was affordable, a lot of colour too. That colour made the cards eye-catching and more desirable, tapping into age-old marketing tactics still in use today.

For example, everyone from food brands to iGaming developers uses bright, vivid colours to grab our attention. In the latter case, online slot games use special designs, colours and themes — much like the tarot cards of old — but now translated into an on-screen digital experience. The results are something like the popular Starburst slot, which challenges players to match colourful gems in a space setting. The game has a relatively simple design, compared to others out there, but stands out thanks to its rainbow of crystals. When artisans were making tarot and other early playing cards, they followed a similar design philosophy.

This is what drove a lot of colourful card decks in the past, most of which have been lost to time. That said, there are websites like Oldest that show the old tarot cards we did save, with some dating way back to 1400s Italy. These early cards were colourful, and the same can be said for early playing cards where each suit had its own colours incorporating green and blue symbols (or detailed illustrations, like German card suits).

Why Red and Black Became Commonplace

So, why did red and black become the default for playing cards? The short answer is mass production, as manufacturers looked to produce more card decks for less. This meant cutting down on inefficiencies, right down to the colour compounds used when making a card. When French-suited cards rose to prominence, they compromised with two colours split across the four suits. As for why they kept black and red – black ink was cheap due to its wide use, while cinnabar was used for red ink and didn’t fade as fast as other colours.

The rest is history – French-suited cards made it to Britain, then spread to the USA and became ubiquitous in Western media, encouraging virtually all card manufacturers to adopt similar designs. However, you can still find regional card decks in places like Switzerland or rural Germany and Spain.

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The Resurgence of Four-Colour Decks

Four-colour decks were once popular for playing bridge, using red hearts, blue spades, green clubs and yellow diamonds. Colour variations changed depending on who made them, but the important part is that these cards were used for games where a card’s suit mattered more. They became less common because games like bridge or whist just weren’t as popular as blackjack or poker.

However, much like our slot example from earlier, online casinos have introduced colour back into our cards. Every modern screen can now generate any colour, at virtually no cost to the provider, thanks to the RGB colour model. This has led to four-colour decks, and other colourful card designs, becoming viable again in customisable poker or themed card games.

That’s the story of how playing cards adopted the red and black suit colours that are iconic today. The red and black design remains the most popular worldwide, and that likely won't change anytime soon, but modern digital games aren’t subject to the same colour constraints that old manufacturers were in the past.