Heart Emoji Meanings: What Every Color Heart Means

Search for heart emoji meanings and you will find lists that give every color a precise definition: green means jealousy, white means pure love, orange means "I like you but only as a friend". Most of that is invented. The Unicode Consortium names the colors, red heart, blue heart and so on, and defines no meaning at all.

What does exist is usage. Millions of people send these hearts every day, and a few clear conventions have formed. This guide gives each color heart its common meaning, says who it is safe to send to, and points to where the meaning came from when there is a real origin. Tap any heart to copy it. For the full set of heart symbols, including the plain text ones like ♥ and ♡, open the heart symbol copy and paste page.

My one rule before the list: who sends the heart matters more than its color. A red heart from your mom and a red heart from a stranger are two different messages.

Heart emoji meanings at a glance

The years come from each heart's Emojipedia entry, which records the Unicode version that added it.

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Where the heart emoji started

The red heart is older than emoji. In March 1995 NTT Docomo sold a Pocket Bell pager that could send a small pixel heart, and Japanese teenagers adopted it fast. When Docomo released a business model without the heart, customers moved to other carriers, according to Emojipedia's history of Docomo emoji. The heart came back, and a few years later Shigetaka Kurita included one in the emoji set he drew for Docomo's i-mode service in 1999 (Wikipedia: Shigetaka Kurita).

The heart has stayed near the top ever since. In the Unicode Consortium's 2021 frequency report, ❤️ was the second most used emoji in the world, behind 😂 (Engadget's summary of the report).

What each color heart means

❤️ Red heart: love, and a lot more than love

Red is the default heart. Between partners it means love. From family it means love of a different kind. In group chats it is often just a reaction: "great news", "I like this", "thank you". The character behind it, U+2764, was in Unicode back in 1993 under the name Heavy Black Heart and became an emoji in 2015 (Emojipedia).

Send it to a partner, family or close friends. From someone you just met, a lone ❤️ reads as interest, so think about that before replying to a new coworker with one.

🩷 Pink heart and the pink family: sweet, not serious

Pink is red with the pressure taken off. It reads as cute, affectionate and a little playful. The single pink heart 🩷 is new, added in Unicode 15.0 in 2022 (Emojipedia), and for years before that people used the other pink hearts instead:

• 💗 growing heart: excitement that keeps building
• 💖 sparkling heart: delight, "this is adorable"
• 💕 two hearts: affection between two people, partners or best friends
• 💓 beating heart: nervous, excited, a crush
• 💞 revolving hearts: love going both ways

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🧡 Orange and 💛 yellow hearts: the friendship hearts

These are the hearts to send when you mean warmth without romance. Yellow 💛 has been around since Unicode 6.0 in 2010 (Emojipedia) and reads as friendship and happiness. Orange 🧡 arrived in 2017 (Emojipedia) and sits between yellow and red: caring, but still not a declaration.

If you are unsure which heart to send to a friend, a coworker or someone new, send 💛. Nobody misreads it.

💚 Green heart: nature, health, growth

Green turns up with plants, hiking photos, healthy food, recycling and anything about recovery or growth. Some lists say green means jealousy. I have not seen anyone use it that way in a real chat, and I would not worry about it.

💙 Blue and 🩵 light blue hearts: trust and calm

Blue 💙 reads as loyal, steady and platonic. It is a common heart between friends who have known each other for years, and it often shows up around causes and sports teams that use blue. Light blue 🩵, added with pink in 2022 (Emojipedia), is mostly used for a soft, pastel look in bios.

💜 Purple heart: compassion, and BTS

Purple has a meaning with a clear origin. At BTS's third fan meeting in November 2016, V said "I purple you". He explained that purple is the last color of the rainbow and stands for trusting and loving someone for a long time (Elite Daily on the origin of "I purple you"). BTS fans have used 💜 as their heart ever since. Outside the fandom, purple reads as compassion and support.

🖤 Black heart: dark humor, grief, goth

Black 🖤 was added in Unicode 9.0 in 2016 (Emojipedia). It does two very different jobs. With friends it is affection with an edge: dark jokes, goth style, "I love this but I am not going to be soft about it". In serious moments it is mourning. Read the context before you reply to one.

🤍 White and 🩶 grey hearts: quiet and minimal

White 🤍 (2019, Emojipedia) is the heart of clean, neutral aesthetics: wedding photos, minimal bios, beige feeds. It is also a gentle way to show support without saying much. Grey 🩶 (2022) is quieter still, and some people use it for mixed or tired feelings.

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🤎 Brown heart: warmth and pride

Brown 🤎 joined Unicode with white in 2019 (Emojipedia). It is used for warmth, coffee and autumn, and often to express pride and solidarity around brown and Black skin.

Hearts that are not about color

• 💔 broken heart: heartbreak, or a joking "that hurts"
• ❤️‍🔥 heart on fire: passion, intense love, "this is hot". Added in Emoji 13.1 in 2020 (Emojipedia)
• ❤️‍🩹 mending heart: healing, getting better after something hard. Same release as heart on fire (Emojipedia)
• 💘 heart with arrow: falling for someone, the Cupid heart
• 💝 heart with ribbon: a gift, a heart given away
• 💟 heart decoration: decorative, close in meaning to 💕
• ❣️ heart exclamation: emphatic agreement or love
• 🫶 heart hands: gratitude and support, often to an audience. Added in 2021 (Emojipedia)

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Which heart to send to whom

The same heart looks different on every phone

Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft each draw their own emoji, so 💖 on an iPhone and 💖 on a Samsung phone are different pictures of the same character. The meaning travels; the exact look does not.

The newest hearts have a second problem. 🩷 🩵 🩶 came out in 2022, and devices without updates since then show a box instead. When the message matters, use a heart every device has, like ❤️ or 💜.

Heart emoji are also a different thing from plain text hearts like ♥ and ♡, which follow the color of the surrounding text. The heart symbol page explains the difference and has every text heart ready to copy. For heart faces such as (｡♥‿♥｡), see the kaomoji collection.

Putting a heart into a design

A heart emoji works in a text message. On a card, a bio header or a phone wallpaper, it usually looks pasted on. Pick the heart color for the meaning, then let the lettering carry it: soft pink script for affection, balloon letters for playful love, warm glass for something calmer. You can browse more examples under the heart tag, or start from the Valentine card designs.

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