A bruise moves through a predictable sequence of colors as it heals: red, dark blue or purple, violet, green, dark yellow, and finally pale yellow before disappearing. The whole process typically takes about two weeks. Each color shift reflects your body breaking down trapped blood beneath the skin, and knowing the pattern helps you gauge whether your bruise is healing normally.
Why Bruises Change Color
When you bump into something hard enough to break tiny blood vessels beneath the skin, blood leaks into the surrounding tissue. Red blood cells trapped outside their vessels begin to rupture, releasing hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen through your bloodstream. Your body then sends specialized immune cells to the site to clean up the mess, and those cells methodically dismantle hemoglobin into a series of smaller compounds. Each of these breakdown products absorbs and reflects light differently, which is why the bruise shifts color as healing progresses.
Red to Purple: The First Two Days
A fresh bruise usually appears pinkish-red within minutes of the injury. That color comes directly from hemoglobin, the same molecule that makes blood red. As the leaked blood loses oxygen over the next several hours, the bruise deepens to a dark blue or purple. At this stage, the area is often swollen and tender because the tissue is still responding to the initial damage. Applying a cold compress during the first 24 to 48 hours can help limit how much blood pools beneath the skin, which may reduce the bruise’s eventual size.
Green: Days 5 Through 7
Around the middle of the first week, the bruise often takes on a greenish tint. This happens because your immune cells have begun converting the heme portion of hemoglobin into a green pigment called biliverdin using a specialized enzyme. The green may appear as patches within a still-purple bruise, giving it a mottled look. That unevenness is normal. Different parts of the bruise contain blood at slightly different stages of breakdown, so you’ll often see two or three colors at once rather than a single uniform shade.
Yellow and Brown: Days 7 Through 14
As biliverdin is further converted into bilirubin, the bruise shifts to dark yellow, then pale yellow. This is the home stretch. The yellow phase signals that your body is nearly finished processing the spilled blood. Meanwhile, iron released from hemoglobin gets stored in the tissue as hemosiderin, a brownish compound. In most bruises, this iron is fully reabsorbed and the skin returns to its normal color within about two weeks.
In some cases, particularly with large or deep bruises, hemosiderin deposits can leave a faint brownish stain on the skin even after the bruise itself has healed. These stains contain iron particles that settled into the tissue, and they can sometimes be permanent. They’re more common on the lower legs, where blood pressure is higher and circulation is slower.
How Skin Tone Affects What You See
The color stages described above are most visible on lighter skin. On darker skin tones, the classic red-to-purple-to-green-to-yellow progression can be difficult or even impossible to see with the naked eye. Skin pigment sits closer to the surface than the bruise itself, which means melanin can obscure the color changes happening underneath. Medical imagery and training materials have historically focused on how bruises appear on white skin, so many people with darker skin tones may not recognize a bruise based on typical descriptions. Tenderness, warmth, and slight swelling at the site are more reliable indicators of bruising when color changes aren’t visible.
What the Timeline Looks Like Overall
- Minutes to hours: Pinkish-red, tender, possibly swollen
- Hours to day 2: Dark blue or purple as hemoglobin loses oxygen
- Days 3 to 5: Violet, beginning to fade at the edges
- Days 5 to 7: Green patches appear as hemoglobin breaks down further
- Days 7 to 10: Yellow or dark yellow as the final pigments are processed
- Days 10 to 14: Pale yellow, then gone
This timeline is an average. Larger bruises heal more slowly, and bruises on your legs tend to take longer than those on your face or arms because gravity pulls blood downward and slows reabsorption. Older adults and people taking blood-thinning medications often bruise more easily and heal more slowly. A bruise that hasn’t noticeably improved after three weeks is outside the normal range.
When a Bruise Isn’t Following the Pattern
Most bruises are harmless, but certain patterns deserve attention. Frequent bruising without an obvious cause can signal a clotting disorder such as hemophilia or von Willebrand disease. Large, very painful bruises (hematomas) may indicate a deeper injury like a fracture, or internal bleeding that needs treatment. Tiny, pinpoint-sized spots, called petechiae, can appear on the skin, inside the mouth, or on the inner eyelids and may point to low platelet levels or an infection.
A bruise that doesn’t improve within three weeks, keeps reappearing in the same spot, or shows up alongside repeated fevers, swollen lymph nodes, night sweats, or unexplained weight loss warrants a medical evaluation. In rare cases, a dark blue-black mark that looks like a bruise but doesn’t follow the normal color progression could be melanoma, a form of skin cancer. Any new discoloration on your skin that doesn’t behave like a typical bruise is worth having checked.