“Golden crown” vs. “gold crown”

In case of the need to describe the color of a crown which is shown as part of an image, which is correct: a golden crown, or a gold crown?

Is it important if it is made of gold or not, but the color is gold?


Most gold crowns are golden, but not all golden crowns are made of gold.


It seems they’re largely interchangeable. The Corpus of Contemporary American English has 35 records for gold crown and 29 for golden crown. The figures for the British National Corpus are 8 and 6. The Oxford English Dictionary, however, has 6 citations for gold crown and 10 for golden crown. This nGram shows an earlier preference for golden crown, but with little difference apparent from about 1960 onwards.

A coin, rather than royal headwear, will, I suspect, generally be a gold crown rather than a golden crown.