In the HVC Chart, colors are by it’s attributes or it’s dimensions, such as hue, value, and chroma. Hue is the dimension that is considered to be emotional and is what differentiates one color family from another color family. Value is the color dimension that can be defined as differentiating dark colors from light colors; value is our perception of a color's lightness or darkness. Chroma is the saturation of a color, or how intense or weak the color is.

The Munsell Nomenclature system is based on the three key dimensions of hue, value, and chroma. The Nomenclature system can be read by understanding those three key elements. For example, if you were given the color 5BG 4/10, 5GB refers to the hue/color, 4 refers to the value/lightness-darkness, and 10 refers to the chroma/intensity. The numerator will always be the value, the denominator will always be the chroma, and the letters will always be the hue. Usually, whenever the denominator and or the numerator has a low number, the dimension of the color will be darker, but if the denominator and or numerator is a higher number, then the dimension of the color will be brighter/lighter.