08/06/2026
Finally going through photos from Morocco and it feels like Chefchaouen deserves a spot on the grid.
It’s a small city in the Atlas Mountains, where the entire medina is painted in various shades of bold, beautiful blue. It’s unclear when and why this first began, but it has become the town’s claim to fame and the locals paint and re-paint, to keep the blue fresh and vibrant. There is no one exact shade, so in many places you see layers of different blues. It’s hard to describe how striking it all is.
Many spots in the medina also raw powdered pigments. They are not natural dyes, but the bags of colour on display still make me so happy. In all my trips to Morocco, I haven’t really found any natural dyeing - they have a long and very old history of carpet making, so they definitely would have been using them in the past. But sadly the ease and lower cost of synthetics means they have taken over completely. If you’ve found plant dyes or dyeing in Morocco, I’d love to hear about it!
One thing we did see over and over was the “indigo for face” seen in the second photo. It’s also called Nila, and it’s a blue cosmetic powder that you use as a face mask (and not made from indigo). We bought some, but have yet to try it out. We also bought a little of the brightest blue pigment, to paint something in our home the colour that will surely always remind us of this special spot.
💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙
