The album produced five singles: "Girl" and "Sleep Sound" as a double-single on 5 May 2014, "Loud Places" on 27 March 2015, "Gosh" on 4 May, and "I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times)" on 22 May.
The vocal sample at the beginning of "Girl" is taken from an episode of the British drama television series Top Boy, and "Gosh" features a clip from a BBC Radio 1 programme called One in the Jungle that was never aired.
[8] The song features vocals by American rapper Young Thug and Jamaican musician Popcaan, which were recorded separately and spliced together by Smith.
[13] A music video for "Sleep Sound", directed by Sofia Mattioli and featuring 13 members of the Manchester Deaf Centre, was released on 10 April 2014.
[24] Q magazine praised it as "an album so rich, complex and dazzlingly fluid" in a rave review,[29] while Pitchfork's Mark Richardson called it a "dazzling culmination of Jamie xx's last six years of work, gathering up elements of everything he’s done—moody ballads, floor-filling bangers, expansive and off-kilter collaborations with vocalists—and packing them tightly into a glittering ball that reflects spinning fragments of feeling back at us.
"[28] Nina Corcoran of Consequence of Sound gave the album a grade of A, writing "Each song grows richer the more you explore its open space.
"[33] In another positive review, Phil Hebblethwaite of NME wrote "[O]n an album defined by its creator making perfect choices, it fits, and you'd never know that Jamie cobbled ‘In Colour’ together on downtime over the last seven year.
"[27] Gareth James of Clash called the album "an emotive, emphatic and often joyous collection of music that plays equally for the head and the heart.
[32] In a less enthusiastic review, Andrew Ryce from Resident Advisor remarks that In Colour is an "uneven album that's rarely as profound or as meaningful as it tries to be".
[35] In another mixed review, The Quietus's Christian Eede called the album "a collection of sexless, sonically conservative tracks overwrought in bass and nostalgia, and largely void of personality – club music for the neoliberal age.