Pool Ball Colors and Numbers: Complete Chart (1-15)

Pool Ball Color Chart

The solids 1 through 7 run yellow, blue, red, purple, orange, green and maroon. The 8 is black, and the stripes 9 through 15 repeat the solids’ colors in the same order.

Add 8 to any solid to find its striped twin: the yellow 1 goes with the yellow-striped 9, and the purple 4 with the purple-striped 12.

These colors are official: the World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA) lists this exact color for every number in its equipment specifications. The same spec calls for each number to be printed twice on opposite sides of the ball, black on a white circle, with the 6 and the 9 underlined so nobody mixes them up.

Standard American Pool Balls: The Basics

A complete pool set has 15 object balls plus the cue ball (16 total). The cue ball is pure white with no number. It’s the only ball you strike with your cue; the object balls move only when another ball hits them.

Fourteen of the 15 object balls split into two groups of seven. Balls 1-7 are solids (one uniform color with a small white circle displaying the number). Balls 9-15 are striped (a colored band around the middle with white on top and bottom, plus a number on the stripe).

The 8-ball is solid black and sits in its own category. You don’t pocket it until you’ve cleared all your assigned balls.

Every ball in a regulation set is the same size and weight, cue ball included: WPA specs call for 2.25 inches in diameter and 5.5 to 6 ounces (156 to 170 grams).

Why These Colors? A Brief History

Nobody left a record of why the 1 got yellow and the 2 got blue, but the scheme is old: the solids-and-stripes look was in place by 1889. Before that, object balls were all the same deep red and told apart only by their numbers, according to Mike Shamos’s New Illustrated Encyclopedia of Billiards. Numbers came first and colors second, and our piece on why pool balls have numbers picks up that thread.

Shamos also notes that players of English pyramid pool and life pool were the first to switch to balls of different colors, and stripes came last. Eight-ball, which arose in the United States around 1900, later gave the solid-versus-stripe split its most famous job.

You’ll see claims online that makers picked these particular colors because they were cheap to dye or easy to read under yellow bar lights. No historical source I could find backs that up, so treat it as a guess.

Lighting did end up shaping ball colors, just a century later and for television cameras, which is the story behind the pink 4-ball below.

Why Is the 8-Ball Black?

No rulebook explains why the 8 is black, but black has marked the game-deciding ball since at least 1925, and it matches neither group, so nobody mistakes it for one of their own. By then eight-ball was popular enough that Brunswick-Balke-Collender sold purpose-made sets for it, with one black ball among seven reds and seven yellows.

The red and yellow groups let spectators see at a glance who owned which balls. The single black ball was the one you had to sink last to win.

Black still marks the last ball: it’s the 8 in American 8-ball and simply “the black” in British blackball.

Why Some Sets Have a Pink 4-Ball

Some sets swap the dark purple 4 and 12 for pink and the maroon 7 and 15 for light brown, because the traditional dark colors were hard to tell apart on television. Aramith, the Belgian ball maker, says the purple and maroon blurred into the dark blue on TV and video, especially under poor lighting.

Its fix was the Super Aramith Pro TV set, with pink and light brown in place of dark purple and maroon, while the blue stayed put. Aramith says that set and its successor, the Aramith Tournament TV, have been used in all major tournaments worldwide. That’s why a pink 4 looks normal to anyone who watches pro pool.

Aramith went further in 2018. Matchroom Sport, the promoter behind events like the Mosconi Cup, asked for even more contrast on small screens. The resulting Aramith Tournament BLACK set replaces orange (the 5 and 13) with a light purple and swaps the dark green for a lighter one. Its striped balls also carry a black design, first added so viewers could tell the 9 from the 1 in nine-ball.

None of this changes a normal home set. Aramith’s regular Super Aramith Pro and Tournament sets keep the traditional colors, so the chart above is what you’ll see on most tables.

Materials and Construction

Modern pool balls are phenolic resin or polyester. Phenolic is harder-wearing and holds its shape longer, and WPA events require it. These synthetics replaced the original ivory, which came from elephant tusks and has been banned from international commercial trade since 1990. Aramith, the best-known phenolic maker, says its phenolic balls last up to five times longer than polyester ones.

Celluloid and Bakelite came between ivory and today’s resins, and our history of what pool balls are made of traces each step. The quality difference shows up on the table. Cheap polyester balls wear faster and develop dead spots where they don’t roll true. Our best pool ball sets roundup sorts the picks by material.

Pool balls are solid resin throughout, so the weight is spread evenly and every ball rolls the same way. Manufacturing tolerances are tight: the WPA allows only five thousandths of an inch either way on the 2.25-inch diameter.

How the number gets onto the ball depends on the set. Aramith says its numbers are precision-engraved in a solid core that runs all the way through the ball, so a number can’t fall out over time. Budget sets often print the numbers on the surface under a clear protective coat, and those can fade with heavy use.

9-Ball vs 8-Ball: Does It Matter?

9-ball and 8-ball use the same ball set. For 9-ball you just rack the 1 through 9 and leave the rest off the table. Learn the ball colors for 8-ball and you know them for 9-ball.

In 8-ball you can pocket your group’s balls in any order. In 9-ball you have to hit the lowest-numbered ball first on every shot, though a combination can sink any ball, the 9 included.

New players should start with 8-ball. You can take your group in any order, so a beginner learning to play pool can work on stroke without planning around a forced sequence.

Snooker: A Completely Different System

Snooker uses its own set of 22 smaller, unnumbered balls on a table much bigger than a pool table, usually 12 feet by 6 feet. That works out to 21 object balls instead of pool’s 15.

Fifteen of those balls are identical reds worth 1 point each. Six are colors: yellow (2 points), green (3 points), brown (4 points), blue (5 points), pink (6 points), and black (7 points). The last one is the white cue ball.

Play alternates between reds and colors. You pot a red, then any color, then another red, and the colors go back on their spots while reds remain. Once the reds are gone, the colors come off in order from yellow up to black. Pot every red with the black and then clear the colors and you have the maximum break of 147.

Snooker balls measure 52.5 mm, about 2 1/16 inches, against 2.25 inches for American pool balls. The WPBSA, snooker’s governing body, holds that size to within 0.05 mm and requires every ball in a set to weigh within 3 grams of the others.

Snooker is popular in the UK and Asia, and the full snooker vs pool comparison puts the two tables and rule sets side by side.

Carom Billiards: The Minimalist Approach

Carom billiards uses only three balls: two cue balls (one white, one yellow or dotted) and one red object ball. There are no pockets. You score by making your cue ball contact both other balls, and in three-cushion the cue ball also has to hit at least three cushions before it reaches the second ball.

Carom balls are bigger than pool balls (61 to 61.5 mm, about 2.4 inches) and unnumbered. It’s huge in Europe and Asia but rare in the US, and it sits alongside the pocket games in our billiard games roundup.

British Blackball: A Middle Ground

British blackball (or British pool) uses 15 object balls and a cue ball like American pool, but the balls are smaller and usually come as two colored groups with no numbers. Each set has 7 reds and 7 yellows plus the black. WPA blackball rules also allow a regular numbered set, with the solids playing the stripes.

The balls are usually 2 inches or 2 1/16 inches across against 2.25 inches for American balls. On many pub tables the cue ball is smaller still, around 1.875 inches.

British tables usually measure 7 feet by 3.5 feet or 6 by 3, smaller than the 8- and 9-foot tables in most American rooms, and the pockets are tighter. Shots that would be routine on an American table become challenging on a British table.

British blackball is the standard in the UK, Ireland, France, and other parts of Europe. If you travel and see a smaller table with red and yellow balls, you’re playing blackball. The rules are similar enough that a competent American pool player can pick it up, but the equipment takes adjustment. Under traditional pub rules a foul gives the other player two visits to the table, which is where the bar argument about two shots on the 8-ball comes from.

Cue Ball Variations: Red Dots, Magnets, and Oversized Bar Balls

Some cue balls break from plain white: measles balls carry red dots, and coin-op bar tables often use a magnetic or oversized cue ball. A measles ball’s dots show which way the ball is spinning and roughly how hard, which is why some cue balls have red dots.

Bar tables have a different problem. When you scratch on a coin-op table, the cue ball has to come back to you while the object balls stay locked away until the next game. Newer tables sort it with a magnet. Aramith’s magnetic cue ball for those tables is a standard 2.25 inches, with the magnetic material spread through the whole ball.

Older tables sorted by size, using an oversized cue ball of about 2 3/8 inches that a metal strip diverts onto its own track. The mechanics behind how a pool table recognizes the cue ball also explain why the white ball on a bar table can feel different from the rest of the set. Whether the cue ball is bigger or smaller than the object balls on a given table comes down to which system it uses.

Choosing Your Set

For a home American table, buy a 2.25-inch set, and go phenolic if your budget allows, because polyester wears out first. Phenolic sets typically run $80 to $300 by grade, and budget polyester sets $30 to $60.

I’d point most home players to the Aramith Premium set (phenolic, 2.25 inches, usually $180 to $220), and our Aramith review weighs whether the premium price pays off.

My own Aramith set has taken two years of weekly games and still rolls true, and I’ve seen older Aramith sets go 10+ years of weekly play without losing roundness or color. (Even premium balls eventually show wear. It just takes a long time, and the usual signs are a dull finish or faded color.)

Make sure the set matches your table. American standard balls (2.25 inches) are oversized for the tight pockets on a British table. British balls on an American table drop too easily into pockets cut for 2.25-inch balls.

If you’re not sure what you’ve got, measure the ball: 2.25 inches is an American set, and about 2 inches is a British set.

Quick Reference: What Matters

Each system uses its own set, and ball size alone usually tells you which one you’re looking at.

Most players only need the American set. Learn which colors are solids (1-7) and which are stripes (9-15), and save the black 8 for last.

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Related reading: how many balls in pool, Aramith ball review, cleaning billiard balls, cue ball size, and cue ball red dots.