The phrase "distinctive shade" is grammatically correct and can be used in written English
It is typically used to describe a particular color or tone that is easily recognizable or unique. Example: The artist carefully mixed different shades of blue to create a distinctive shade that would make her painting stand out.
According to The Financial Times's Web site, the paper is a "distinctive shade of salmon pink".
Cadbury has lost a five-year court battle to register a distinctive shade of purple as a trademark for its chocolate bars.
Alan Shearer's recent trawl around his old team-mates to relive Euro 96 for the BBC was an enjoyable enough reverie, if viewed a little too much through a lens with a distinctive shade of rose.
To make this point, he imagined Picasso taking Monet to court over the use of blue in his painting of water lilies, because it was the same or close to the distinctive shade of indigo, the "colour of melancholy" he used in his Blue Period.
To denote its development as an exclusive neighborhood, Macy planted distinctive shade trees along Underhill Road.
(Notice how the polar bears' eyes and eyebrows have distinctive shades of Gromit).
In his classic study "The American Jeremiad" (1978), the Harvard scholar Sacvan Bercovitch put his finger on the distinctive shading our writers have given the ancient form: "American writers have tended to see themselves as outcasts and isolates, prophets crying in the wilderness.
He created the distinctive blue shade used on the walls of the hallway: "That kind of Moroccan blue, I mixed myself – I think they call it milk paint, and you add pigment to it, so I did a mix of several different blues".
HONDA -- Distinctive logo and shade of blue.
I remember seeing Ian's head with his distinctive haircut and shades pop out behind her.
Abdomen brownish to black in color with distinctive yellow banding shading into brown along lateral margins of tergites.
