The Rubik's Cube color schemes

There are two common color alignments of the Rubik's Cube, the Japanese and the Western color schemes. They both use the same six colors: white, yellow, orange, red, green and blue and there's only a slight difference between them. Cubes with white plastic body usually have black stickers instead of white.

Japanese color scheme

Rubiks Cube Japanese color scheme Let's begin with the Japanese color sheme which was used on the earliest mass-produced cubes and is still used today by a small number of speedcubers. They prefer to start the Fridrich method with the blue cross to finish with the white last layer.

Western color sheme

Western Rubiks Cube color scheme The Western color sheme (also known as BOY: blue-orange-yellow) is the most used color arrangement used not only on Rubik's Cubes but on the majority of cube-shaped twisty puzzles these days.
Cubers who use this color scheme usually start solving the Rubik's Cube with the white face and finish with the yellow.
This color scheme is also called Minus Yellow because if you add or extract yellow from any side you get its opposite.

white + yellow = yellow
red + yellow = orange
blue + yellow = green

Regulations

The WCA regulations don't specify what color scheme must the competitors use on official cubing events. Rule number 3a3 specifies that polyhedral puzzles must use a color scheme with one unique color per face in the solved state.

The Inventor's comment

In 2014 the inventor of the Rubik's Cube, Rubik Ernõ was asked why did he choose these six colors to mark the faces of the puzzle he answered:

"If the cube wouldn't be colored there would be no objective, there would be nothing to solve. Using the colors we can specify the target we have to reach. I was looking for the most simple way to mark the solved state. I chose these six colors (actually 5 real colors because we don't really call white a color) because they are all basic colors and there's no need to explain them. Everybody knows what red, blue, yellow, green, orange and white are."
(Rubik Ernõ)

The yellow and white sides next to each other: an unusual color scheme

Send

Peter Renzland

The original Ideal scheme had Yellow-Up with Red-Right and Blue-Back. The current scheme has White-Up, which makes the logo visible. This is the most intelligent scheme.

As for the actual colours, the most intelligent designs make it possible to distinguish opposite colours in low light.

Rob Nienburg

There's also the "don't give a f#@%" color scheme that become clear when you order a whole lot of cubes out of China and each one is different.

Jovanovic Pavle

Or when you follow every single tutorial on YouTube and it's not working, just to realize that I have a custom color cube where yellow and white are inverted. Fckgn Chinese cubes. Can't even follow original color order.

Lisa Liel

I never understood why they changed it from the original Japanese scheme. Every time I see a cube and blue and white aren't opposite each other, it just seems weird to me.

Jakab Attila

The western scheme is the original. Even the first series of cubes were colored according to the western scheme when those cubes were produced and sold only in Hungary. That time it was not even called Rubik cube but simply Magic Cube ("bűvös kocka" in hungarian).

Roy Billstrom

Maybe the Americans wanted to be able to see red white and blue together from one corner. ❤️🤍💙

Becky Hicks

i can see some logic to the colour scheme. But i would have thought primary colours of yellow blue and red and then the secondary colours of green orange purple. with the pairs being opposite on the colour wheel. yellow -blue, red-green, orange-purple. In fact I have probaly thought about this way too much, espeacially now the novelty metallic and holographic cubes have come out. But neon glow in the dark would be cool ( with the paint being powered by sunlight ) , pastel or morandi colour schemes.