This paper proposes a new vectorial total variation prior (VTV) for color images. Different from existing VTVs, our VTV, named the decorrelated vectorial total variation prior (D-VTV), measures the discrete gradients of the luminance component and that of the chrominance one in a separated manner, which significantly reduces undesirable uneven color effects. Moreover, a higher-order generalization of the D-VTV, which we call the decorrelated vectorial total generalized variation prior (D-VTGV), is also developed for avoiding the staircasing effect that accompanies the use of VTVs. A noteworthy property of the D-VT(G)V is that it enables us to efficiently minimize objective functions involving it by a primal-dual splitting method. Experimental results illustrate their utility.