It’s All About The Color

Do you ever wonder why you are drawn to certain colors or why some colors bring out different emotions? There appears to be a strong correlation to the colors in nature. Some experts are convinced that you should be more aware of how color may affect behavior and emotion in yourself and those around you.

Across many cultures, blue is a highly favored color. A saturated blue is often associated with a beautiful blue sky, a calm lake and tends to bring out a soothing effect. Green is a great color to use in the workplace on your desk. Green is restful for your eyes and produces the least amount of eyestrain. Many companies use a large amount of this color on their websites for this reason as well.

You may want to consider painting your office blue and green. Researchers at Creighton University found these colors helped the employees to feel more calm, centered, and positive towards their work. The blue lowered the heart rate, the green reduced anxiety and is also associated with money.

On the opposing side, if you want to be seen as aggressive, choose black. There was a study done with 52,000 National Hockey League games some years ago showing that when the teams wore their black jerseys, there were more incidents of aggression and penalties. Because of this study, the NHL made it mandatory that the home team wear only white jerseys. The same teams were assessed after the change and the data showed the teams had significantly less issues on the ice.

You also need to be mindful about the saturation and brightness of color and how people respond. Saturation is how pure the color is. Less saturated colors tend to have an underlying gray color. Brightness is how light a color is. Less saturated, but bright colors are relaxing. Highly saturated and less bright colors are more energizing to look at.

Since the biology connected with basic color vision is the same for all people with normal color vision, it’s fairly unlikely that we can attribute color preference to DNA or genetics. Many say it relates more to culture and some say life experiences which accounts for changes in preferences over the years. Whatever the reason, it may be worth a little research before you decide to change the main colors in your life.