Book bands are the closest thing UK primary reading has to a universal currency: a colour on the spine that says roughly how hard the book is, regardless of publisher. A Pink-band Collins book and a Pink-band Oxford book should be about the same difficulty. The system mostly works — with caveats worth knowing before you compare notes at the school gate.
| Band | Phonics stage | Typical year |
|---|---|---|
| Pink (1) | Phase 2 | Reception autumn |
| Red (2) | Phase 3 | Reception |
| Yellow (3) | Phase 3–4 | end of Reception |
| Blue (4) | Phase 4–5 | Reception / Year 1 |
| Green (5) | Phase 5 | Year 1 |
| Orange (6) | Phase 5 | Year 1 |
| Turquoise (7) | Phase 5 | end of Year 1 |
| Purple (8) | Phase 6 | Year 2 |
| Gold (9) | Phase 6 | Year 2 |
| White (10) | beyond phonics | end of Year 2 |
| Lime (11) | beyond phonics | Year 2–3 |
After Lime, most schools call children "free readers" — the banding fades out because fluent readers choose by interest, not level. Some schools extend the ladder (Brown, Grey, Dark Blue…) as a Key Stage 2 guide, but usage varies widely.
Three honest reasons. First, banding is done by publishers and there's no single referee — one publisher's Green is another's slightly-hard Blue. Second, phonics-first schools now match early books to the sounds taught so far rather than the band, so two children on "the same colour" at different schools may be reading quite different books. Third, schools using Read Write Inc often use its storybook colours instead of book bands entirely — and RWI's colour sequence is different, which is how you end up with a child "on Pink" who is far beyond a Pink-band book.
Use bands the way schools do: as a rough sat-nav, not a ranking. The questions that matter are simpler — can your child read most of the book without help (if not, it's too hard for solo reading), and are they enjoying it (if not, nothing else matters much)? A child cruising through slightly-easy books is building the fluency that the next band up needs. There is no prize for racing the ladder — the readers who love it at seven were rarely rushed at five.
Compiled August 2026 from published band comparison charts. Not educational advice — when this page and your child's teacher disagree, back the teacher.