Order of Adjectives Before a Noun

Level: A2. When you put more than one adjective in front of a noun, English expects them in a particular order. Native speakers feel it without thinking: a big red car sounds right, a red big car sounds wrong. This lesson gives you the order so you never have to guess.

The rule

An adjective is a word that describes a noun (big, red, wooden). When two or more adjectives describe the same noun and come before it, they follow a fixed sequence. The widely taught order is:

opinion → size → age → shape → colour → origin → material → purpose → NOUN

• Opinion = what you think of it: nice, ugly, lovely, boring.
• Size = how big or small: big, small, tall, tiny.
• Age = how old or new: old, new, young, ancient.
• Shape = the form: round, square, flat, long.
• Colour = red, blue, green.
• Origin = where it is from: French, Japanese, lunar.
• Material = what it is made of: wooden, silk, plastic.
• Purpose = what it is for (often ends in -ing or acts like part of the noun): sleeping (bag), racing (car), frying (pan).

So a lovely little old round brown Italian wooden sleeping table runs straight down the list. In real life you almost never use that many — but when you use two or three, they must keep this relative order: opinion before fact, size before colour, colour before material.

A noun is the thing being described (table, car, dog). It always comes last, after every adjective.

The order table

Example sentences

Common mistakes

• ❌ a red big car → ✅ a big red car. Size comes before colour.
• ❌ a wooden lovely table → ✅ a lovely wooden table. Opinion always comes before material and every other fact adjective.
• ❌ an old small house → ✅ a small old house. Size comes before age.
• ❌ a leather black bag → ✅ a black leather bag. Colour comes before material.
• ❌ a French beautiful painting → ✅ a beautiful French painting. Opinion comes before origin.
• ❌ a big nice dog → ✅ a nice big dog. Opinion (nice) outranks size (big).

A short conversation

A: I bought a new bag at the market. B: Nice! What’s it like? A: It’s a lovely little brown leather bag. It was really cheap. B: A brown leather bag sounds perfect for work.

Usage notes

• Commas or not? Adjectives of the same type take a comma or and (a cold, wet, windy day). Adjectives of different types just sit side by side with no comma (a big red ball, not a big, red ball).
• Numbers and determiners go first. Words like a, the, my, two, these come before all the describing adjectives: my two old black cats, not old my two black cats.
• Keep it short. English speakers rarely use more than two or three adjectives before a noun; four is already heavy. The order matters most for the two or three you actually use.
• After the verb, order relaxes. When adjectives come after be and are joined by and, the strict order loosens: The car is red and big is acceptable in speech, though big and red is still more natural.

Compared with…

• Basic adjective position. Before you worry about ordering several adjectives, make sure the single-adjective rules are solid: an adjective goes before a noun or after be, and never takes a plural -s. See Adjectives: Position and Basic Use.

Quick recap before you practise.

Practice

Quiz

Recap cheat-sheet

Next

• Next topic: Past Continuous vs Past Simple
• Review first: Adjectives: Position and Basic Use
• Back to the English grammar section