More Color Psychology

Knowing How Color Affects Us Is A Plus

Knowing how color affects our moods, health, and bodies, is a head-start to creating an environment that caters to positive feelings and healthy interaction. Western culture is catching up with Eastern culture in understanding the impact of color on the human psyche and body. When it comes to choosing colors for our homes, it is important to consider how the color will affect the minds, moods, and bodies of the people who will be living with it.

Have you ever noticed how some fast-food restaurants choose the colors red, orange, and yellow for their interiors? Do you wonder why? Interestingly, the combination of these colors causes a great deal of good feelings and intense movement. So, customers buy a lot of food and then rush out the door, so there's always room for more people. These colors are not calming but exciting. They offer an opportunity for the restaurant to make money and move people through quickly.

Feeling Blue?

We covered red, orange, yellow, and green in a different article. We will look at the cooler colors now and investigate their effect upon the minds and bodies of people.

In contrast to the color red, blue tends to lower blood pressure and is linked to the throat and thyroid gland. It has a cooling and soothing affect upon people, similar to green. The pituitary gland is the gland that regulates our sleep patterns. This gland is stimulated by deep blue. This deeper blue has been proven to help the skeletal structure by keeping bone marrow healthy. Blue is associated with night, the sky, and of course, water. We feel relaxed and calm when we are enveloped in this color. Light blues quiet us and relieve the sense of rushing we often feel throughout the day. Blue is helpful in dealing with insomnia and, like yellow, it inspires mental control, clarity and creativity.  You will often see bedrooms painted blue.  However, too much of a good thing can evoke feelings of depression.

The Royal Color Has Great Impact

Violet, a shade of purple, has a purifying and antiseptic effect which has proven useful in the treatment of sunburn. The body's metabolism is balanced and hunger is suppressed when this color is present. Indigo, a lighter shade of purple, has been used by doctors in Texas as an anesthesia since it has a soothing or numbing (narcotic) qualities. Mental and nervous disorders have been cared for with the use of purples as they have shown to help balance the mind and change obsessions and fears. Intuition and imagination are stimulated by indigo, which is associated with the right-brain. Violet can bring peace and combat shock and fear and emotional disturbances. Violet also has major associations with psychic power and protection, sensitivity to beauty, high ideals and it stimulates creativity, spirituality and compassion.

Brown is an earth color and genders the sense of home. It brings stability and security on the positive side, but has been associated with withholding emotion and retreating from the world on the negative side.

The Neutrals: Black, White, And Gray

The so-called neutrals, black, white, and gray all have their own "feelings" as well. Black can be comforting and protective yet mysterious and often associated with silence and death. It is passive and can prevent growth. Ultimate purity is associated with white, as is feelings of peace and comfort. Feelings of openness and freedom are also linked to white. However, too much white can feel cold and distant, creating a feeling of separation and isolation. Independence and self-reliance are connected to gray even though it is often considered to be a negative color. It can communicate evasion and non-commitment (it is neither black nor white). It can carry the sense of separation, lack of involvement and loneliness. Some people associate heaviness and gloom with gray.

Slowly the world is adapting to the concept that color affects us-in our bodies and in our moods. The idea is still often met with resistance, even though the evidence is strong and certain in many cases. Nevertheless, by checking out how you feel in a room of a certain color, you may be able to notice how that color affects you, and those with you.