Learn French: Nous avons des sacs bleus et des maillots bleu clair. - We have blue bags and light blue jerseys.

In French, compound color adjectives (colors made of two or more words, like bleu clair or vert foncé) are invariable. This means they are completely frozen and never change to match the gender or number of the noun they describe.

Why does bleus get an -s while the bleu in bleu clair does not?

Because bleus is a simple, single-word color adjective, it follows the normal rule: it agrees with the masculine plural noun sacs. However, as soon as you add a modifying word like clair to make a compound color, the entire phrase becomes invariable and stays in the default masculine singular form.

Could we place the color adjectives before the nouns, like des bleus sacs?

No. While some French adjectives go before the noun (like beauty, age, number, or goodness), color adjectives almost always come directly after the noun they describe.

Why do we use des here instead of de? I thought plural nouns sometimes take de.