Which one is correct to say the lightest or the most light describing a fair colour?

Answer 1

Use lighter or lightest. The comparative with "more" is used mainly for polysyllabic adjectives of foreign origin, such as "beautiful" or "stupendous." When used with native English monosyllabic adjectives such as light, the construction with "more" is stilted. Avoid it. --- ONE COLOUR

To describe a fair colour without reference to another shade of that colour, you could just say 'light' or 'very light', or even 'pale' or 'very pale'. e.g.

# green # light green / pale green

# very light green / very pale green

Of course, if you are talking about hair, you could say someone has light brown hair, or fair hair, or they may even be blond.

TWO COLOURS

If you are comparing two colours, two paint colours for example, and you are looking at two different pale yellow paints, one may be lighter than the other. In other words, one will be a lighter or paler yellow than the other; 'lighter yellow' means 'more light yellow' than the other light yellow that it is being compared with.

RANGE OF COLOURS

If you are looking at several colour shades, of cream paint for example, and they are all very similar, but slightly different from each other, then the palest one of the range could also be called the lightest one, and the least pale would be the darkest one.

The word 'lightest' means 'the most light' of the range being considered. So one of the creams may be the lightest cream of the range being looked at.

GRAMMAR

In English, when identifying the degree of 'lightness', or fairness, or paleness, of whiteness etc, instead of saying most light / most fair / most pale / most white / etc. we usually say lightest / fairest /palest / whitest etc.

The same grammar rules apply for many other words. For example, in a class of students, the 'most tall' student is called the tallest student. Notice how the '-ost' of the word 'most' is added to the adjective 'tall' to make the word 'tallest', the 'o' is changed to an 'e', and the suffix becomes '-est'

MORE and MOST

Words formed from more and most are called 'comparatives' and 'superlatives'.

* For more information, see 'Related links' below.

Answer 2

The correct way to describe a fair color as being very light is to say "the lightest." This is because "light" is a one-syllable adjective, so the comparative form is created by adding "-est" to the end.