Golden sands are boring: The world’s 10 most colourful beaches

A beautiful sandy beach can come in more than one colour. For many travellers, golden beaches are the default, while white sand beaches are the dream. But in some parts of the world, the beaches get a lot more flamboyant in their decoration…

Pfeiffer Beach, California

In the Big Sur region of the Californian coast, Pfeiffer Beach is best known for the photogenic rock arch that poses in the ocean, just offshore. But it also does a nice line in purple sand.

The sand here is purple courtesy of manganese garnet deposits that come down from the surrounding hills and get washed up on the beach. It’s best seen after rain, which brings out the colour.

Piha Beach, New Zealand

Piha Beach, reached via a steep descent through the Waitakere Ranges from Auckland, is dominated by the hulking great Lion Rock, which the beach timidly splits itself around. But as with many of New Zealand’s west coast beaches, the sand here comes courtesy of centuries of volcanic activity. That makes it a magnificently moody black colour. Unsurprisingly, Piha Beach is more suited to tackling crashing surf than lolling under a beach umbrella.

Papakolea Beach, Hawaii

Volcanic activity doesn’t always produce black sand, however. At Papakolea Beach on Hawaii’s Big Island, the neighbouring volcanic tuff contains a lot of olivine – which gets its green colour from ferrous iron. The olivine crystals tend to stay on the beach when other lava components and volcanic sand get washed away. This gives the beach a distinctive green tinge.

Lucky Bay, Western Australia

One of several outrageously attractive beaches in the Cape Le Grand National Park near Esperance, Lucky Bay has stuck one over on more famous rivals – including Hyams Beach in Jervis Bay and Whitehaven Beach in the Whitsundays. Soil scientist Noel Schoknecht gathered samples from several likely contenders to adjudicate which had the whitest sand, and Lucky Bay came out on top. When fans of Whitehaven complained, the tests were redone more scientifically, measuring the spectral reflectance – and Lucky Bay won again.

Red Sand Beach, Broome

WA doesn’t just stick to white sand beaches, however. Go north and the red pindan dirt that defines the Pilbara and Kimberley landscapes often makes its way into the sand, too. Many of Broome’s beaches have white sand with a red cliffs backdrop, but the unimaginatively named Red Sand Beach on Roebuck Bay goes all-in on the drowned-in-ketchup look. It’s next to the Broome Bird Observatory, about 21 kilometres east of town.

Pink Sands Beach, the Bahamas

Another one that plays spoilsport on the naming front, Pink Sands Beach on Harbour Island stretches for about 4.5 kilometres. The pink colour comes courtesy of tiny marine organisms called foraminifera, which have pinkish shells. When the shells get crushed up and spat out by the sea, they mingle imperceptibly with the sand, leading to the Barbie vibes.

Bermuda also has plenty of pink sand, for the same reason.

Rockaway Beach, California

Brown sand is usually an indication that the local water company could do with considerably tighter regulatory oversight, but that’s not the case at Rockaway Beach near San Francisco. Here, the sand is a chocolatey brown colour. Minerals in the surrounding rocks are again the culprits, with a darkish blue limestone and volcanic greenstone mixing like a careless child’s paint set to produce the brown sand.

Ramla Bay, Gozo, Malta

The biggest sandy beach on the island of Gozo isn’t exactly huge by international standards, but it makes up for its lack of size with impeccable orangeness. The Maltese language name of the beach translates as “red sands” but given it looks like a giant Sunny Delight truck which has had a terrible accident, it’s safe to say the locals haven’t quite got the name right.

Rainbow Beach, Queensland

If you don’t want to limit yourself to just one colour of sand, then Rainbow Beach in Queensland lives up to its name by providing a satisfying multi-coloured sand buffet. A complex mix of minerals in the cliffs behind the beach lead to brown, red, orange, pink, yellow and white sands combining within a few metres of each other. Budding artists can use them for finger-painting a rainbow in the damp sand along the shoreline.

Redhan Beach, Maldives

It’s not always the sand that’s an unusual colour. On Vaadhoo Island in the Maldives, it’s the water that’s weird. It is home to millions of tiny algae called phytoplankton, which emit a strangely luminous and twinkly blue light.

In the Maldives, this bioluminescence is called the Sea of Stars, and it is more pronounced between June and September. Swim in it, and it looks like you’re breaststroking through fairy dust.