colorize label of specific enumerate item

Question

\begin{enumerate}
\item 1
\item[red] 2
\end{enumerate}

For itemize I could use \item[\textcolor{red}{--}] or something, but for enumerate that does not really work.

I already tried [\textcolor{red}{\arabic{enumi}}] - which oddly started with 1 again [\textcolor{red}{\value{enumi}}] - which resulted in a pdflatex error [\textcolor{red}{\theenumi}] - which printed the (custom) ref= for that entry - and also counted from 1 on

Answer 1

The following method works with or without the enumitem package being loaded, and it works for both enumerate and itemize environments.

Observe that the macro \myitem is set up to take one optional argument, and that the default value of the optional argument is red. Thus, \myitem will create an item number that's red, while \myitem[blue] will create an item number that's -- you guessed right -- blue.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\newcommand\myitem[1][red]{\color{#1}\item\color{black}}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
\item   A
\myitem B
\myitem[blue] C
\item   D
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}