Food colours are added to different types of commodities to increase their visual attractiveness or to compensate for the natural colour variations. There is a growing concern about the safety of some commonly used legal food colourants with the widely used of synthetic colours. Additionally, a number of dyes with known or suspected genotoxic or carcinogenic properties have been shown to be added illegally to foods. The aim of this review was to summarize the difinitions, classifications, properties, together with the detaction technologies of the food colours and illegal dyes in both domestics and abroad. Moreover, the key points, difficulties and the developments of the detection technologies in food colours were also pespected.