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Karate Belt Colors

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Karate belt colors are used to tell how skilled a student is. Colored belts were first used in Japanese Judo, but were soon adopted into the Shotokan style of karate, and are now used in many martial arts. The standard colors are white, yellow, green, brown and black, but many schools have also added orange and blue belts for further distinction.

The order of the colors is based from light colors and progresses to dark colors. This is because many karate students, especially in the past, would dye their belts to achieve the different colors. Every student would start out with a white belt and as they progressed in rank they would dye it to the appropriate color. It is much easier to progress from light to dark when dying fabrics.

One other theory about how belt ranking was devised is a little bit more natural and organic, but is more likely a myth than true. Every student would start out with a white belt, but as they trained it would get progressively dirtier and darker until it was black after years of training. White, yellow and brown make sense, but green and black seem difficult, or at least very unsanitary to achieve.

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