Red House

Another iconic principle governs the order of adjectives in English: In a noun phase, properties that are more inherent to the object designated by the head noun are closer to the head noun. This we can say the "beautiful big old red wooden house," but not *the red wooden beautiful old big house* or *the wooden red old big beautiful house,* and so on. "Wooden" is closest to the head noun since it indicates what the house is made of, which is inherent to the house. "Beautiful" comes first because it is purely subjective. "Old" is neither inherent to the house (it doesn't start out old) nor purely subjective; instead, it is relative to some standard of age. Thus it comes closer to the head noun than "beautiful" and farther from it than "wooden". "Red" is not completely inherent (you can repaint the house), but it is more inherent than old, which depends purely on the time of the utterance relative to the time at which the house was built. As a physical property "big" is less subjective than beautiful, but more subjective than old, since the standard of what counts as "big" is more subjective than the standard of what counts as "old". ~ Page 465