Featured California Travel

A Rainbow of Colored Sand Beaches

When many of us think of a tropical vacation, we imagine blue waters and white sandy beaches, not colored sand beaches! While white beaches admittedly beautiful, there are a number of more unusual beach destinations where you can travel to see sand in a variety of different colors of sand, including green, red, and black sand beaches, and even orange, purple, and multi-colored. We present a variety of colored sand beaches from locations around the world:

Red Sand Beach in Maui

Kaihalulu Beach in Maui, one of the Hawaiian islands, also known as Red Sand Beach, is near Hana Bay. The red sand is similar in color to the clay found in the southeastern United States, but this red sand comes from the crumbling volcanic cinder cone that surrounds the beach.

Learn more about Maui’s Kaihalulu Beach here.

Kaihalulu Beach, red sand beach, Hawaii

Black Sand Beach in Maui

Not far from the red sand beach is another distinctive color – black. Honokalani is famous for its black sand beaches, also made up of pieces of volcanic rock.

Black sand beach, Maui, Hawaii
Black Sand Beach in Maui

Green Sand Beach in Hawaii

Papakolea Beach, also called Green Sand Beach, is located on the big island of Hawaii. Its green hue comes from small particles of olivine or peridot, a gemstone, that makes up part of the sand.

Papakolea Beach, Green sand beach in Hawaii

Purple Sand Beach in California

Pfeiffer Beach in Big Sur State park, near Monterey California, boasts light purple sand for its shores. The color comes from manganese garnet that washes down from higher elevations nearby.

Purple Sand Beach in California

Orange Sand Beach in Greece

Xi Beach in Kefalonia, Greece, has beautiful orange sand beaches. In addition to the unusual colored sand on the beach, there are cliffs nearby made of pure white clay.

Orange Sand Beach, Xi Beach, Kefalonia, Greece

Multi-Colored Beach in Kauai

Glass Beach at the southern end of Kauai in Hawaii definitely gives you the most colors combined on one single beach. The sand is often liberally covered with many colors of beach glass, all coming from a nearby dump.

Glass Beach, Kauai, Hawaii

Beautiful colors exist in the sand on many beaches, and these are just a few of the most popular destinations. No matter what your favorite color is, chances are you can find it somewhere in the world if you choose the right colored sand beaches, so which one is your favorite?

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