浅 vs 淡 for the purpose of describing light colors

[rolatis]

I've recently come across these two characters and I have read that they are put in front of a color to turn the color into (light color), like light red for example. I'm just wondering if there is any difference between these two characters for describing light colors (e.g. like in different contexts you would use one character over another), or if these two characters can be used interchangeably.

[Guest123]

As far as I understand, 淡 means dull, colour is not bright, and 浅 means that colour is light, not dark, like blue of the sunny sky vs bleu navy dark colour.

[Messidor]

As a mainlander I use them interchangeably, eg. 浅红色，浅绿色，淡绿色，淡红色；颜色浅，颜色淡. As with the case where they are combined with 色, 浅 is far more prominent, ie. 浅色 is more common (also shown in the corpus) and sounds more natural （at least to my ears）.

 

Perhaps I use 淡 more frequently than 浅 （not with 色）because of my mother tongue ( southern dialects）. And others' usages may be the other way round. 

Every Chinese speaks the Mandarin with the regional styles, their personal styles and many other variations (resulted from education, gender, occupation, immediate occasions, etc.) intertwined.

[889]

Remember too that if you get the tone wrong, 淡色 can become 单色, referring to something in one single color.

[dwq]

If you look at the opposite of these words, you get 濃 and 深.  And 濃紅色 is Intense Red / Bright Red, whereas 深紅色 is Dark Red.  In this particular usage we can see 濃淡 refers to the intensity (Saturation) of a color, and 深淺 refers to the lightness (Value), the more 深 you go, the closer it gets to black.

 

http://vanseodesign.com/web-design/hue-saturation-and-lightness/

 

However, we do not always apply that strictly. For 淡 and 淺, I agree with Messidor that they are used somewhat interchangeably, with 淺 being more common.