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When I began this article, I approached the latest color research with most of the same color preconceptions we all have. Each color has inherent meaning and evokes a certain feeling when we see it, right? Well, the research quickly showed that this is only partially correct. While colors can evoke certain feelings within us, the colors themselves do not actually possess specific meanings. All of the meanings that have been assigned to colors are learned, and change from culture to culture.
For example, according to Kenneth and Cherie Fehrman, in their book Color: The Secret Influence, different colors are often chosen to represent the same thing, depending on which country you are in, such as:
- In America, we use the term blue humor to describe risqué comedy
- In Spain, the same type of comedy is referred to as green humor
- The Japanese associate that kind of humor with the color pink
- And people in Hong Kong think of it as yellow humor!
Additionally, when you are blue in the United States you are depressed, in Germany you are drunk and in Finland you are a bit short on money.
[For more information on color meanings in Feng Shui and numerous Eastern cultures, don't miss my upcoming article in this series titled 'Feng Shui Color Relationships vs. Western Culture Color Schemes']
Do you know our entire world is actually colorless? While I find this mind boggling, it is true that color is a complete illusion! Everything we see, touch, wear and eat has absolutely no color of its own, according to Fehrman and Fehrman. We only see color when light is present. Each color has a different wavelength, which causes us to see a rainbow of colors. (While this explanation is admittedly a bit of an oversimplification, it will serve our purpose nicely in regard to this article.)
So, enough about the science of color, where did all of those learned meanings come from? In Western culture the basic meanings came from an elaborate, archaic language called Blazon. This language was developed sometime around the mid-thirteenth century and was based on Norman French. It dealt with the terms, rules and often complicated consequences of heraldry. Just think of all the flags of the nations within the Western Culture that use red, white and blue as a color combination! It is from Blazon that we have acquired our patriotic meanings for red as courage, white as purity and blue as loyalty.
It does not end with red, white and blue though. In Medieval society, color was linked to astronomy. Yellow was associated with the sun, white the moon, red was connected with Mars, green was affilated wtih Mercury and blue represented Jupiter.
This painting, titled Jupiter, from my Psycho-Baroque series, is a good example of identifying color with the planets. Even though this painting has no actual relation to the planet Jupiter, it feels right to use the color associated with it, since the focus of this piece - the swan - is named Jupiter!
These strong associations still exist in Europe today. By the time of King Henry VIII, in England, green had come to symbolize unfaithfulness. This related to the grass stains on a "virgin's" clothing. Henry VIII was a busy guy!
But what meanings do we associate with color today? While many of our beliefs regarding color are affected by outside influences - such as friends, school, and the media - our interpretation of color signals most often originates from the color myths and biases we have been taught since birth. Nature provides us with our most commonly expressed definitions of color.
For example, what symbols are generally associated with the color red? Customarily, red is linked to blood or fire, so it is thought of as a 'power color'. Red also has strong associations with courage and love, so it is regarded as being charged with emotion. In China, red takes on a slightly different meaning ... it stands for joy, happiness and good fortune. In fact, it is still the gown color chosen most often by Chinese brides. On Chinese New Year, coins are given in lucky red envelopes to wish good luck.
Red is also one of the few colors whose meaning changes profoundly when mixed with white. When red is changed to pink it becomes gentle and feminine. Interestingly, pink has its own dark side though. An experiment was done in 1979 on the effects of pink. A holding cell was painted pink, first at a U.S. Naval Correctional Center in Seattle, Washington and then later at the Santa Clara County Jail in San Jose, California.
Initially, when detainees were placed in their pink holding cells, they were transformed into a humorous and restful mood within 15 minutes. Yet ... when left for longer periods their mood changed. After about 4 hours, prisoners became violent and went completely out of control to the extent of trying to hurt themselves and destroy their cells. Animal studies further showed that exposure to pink light for long periods caused them to become cannibalistic! Yikes!
When we layer this information over the fact that most parents tend to bathe their little girls' environment entirely in pink - walls, furniture, decor and almost all the clothing they wear - interesting questions arise. What long-term effects might this predominant color choice have on little girls?
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In contrast, orange is a color with which we seem to have a love/hate relationship. A warm color, due to its association with the color of fire, orange is considered cheerful by most people. Even orange blossoms while not orange themselves, still hold meaning. The French used to adorn their bridges with orange blossoms to symbolize the hope of fruitfulness. As it darkens, orange offers a sense of comfort. Picture a warm piece of pumpkin pie as the whipped cream slowly melts down over the sides - in the warm, orange glow of firelight.
Orange also stimulates appetite, hence its frequent use in fast food restaurants. Further, according to House Beautiful Magazine, orange reduces tension. You can easily picture this in the orange shades that fall within the peach or coral range. Yet, ironically if orange becomes too bright or garish it can easily go from soothing to high energy and then to high anxiety.
Even as orange moves into warm brown it continues to soothe and comfort.
That is why I chose a dark orange-brown color as a backdrop in most of the paintings in a series that focuses on my dogs and a mysterious connection with jazz. My dogs - boxers adopted from Bay Area Boxer Rescue - bring a great sense of comfort and warmth into my life, and I used the rust background to exemplify this - as you can see in Shapes & Shadows 1 from my Jazz Dogs series.
Brown is a very warm and comforting color - and as you can see in this painting titled Chocolate Delight from my new Delicious Bites series, deep rich browns - like the color of this rich, gooey piece of chocolate cake - can have a luxurious and almost decadent feel to them. Yes ... that same decadent feeling you get when you contemplate taking a bite of that delicious cake! As your mouth begins to water just thinking about it, can't you also sense a warm feeling comforting you?
 Yellow is considered to be a cheerful color due to its close color relationship with the sun. Yet, yellow is another color that has mixed meanings. Despite the perception of yellow as a happy color, it is the least favorite color chosen by people in surveys. On the positive side, it is the yellow flowers that bloom first in the spring: crocus, daffodils and forsythia. The Chinese have historically regarded yellow as a very important color. During the 10th century, yellow was adopted as the imperial color in China.
For me, yellow has always symbolized friendship. I remember in the early stages of dating my husband I took him a small bouquet of yellow daisies and some soup when he had the flu. Yellow daisies seemed safe, saying only, 'I like you', as opposed to the intense passion of red roses.
On the down side, yellow can also mean sickness, particularly jaundice. It is the color of the flag used to indicate that a ship at sea is in quarantine due to an epidemic or illness. In nature, yellow is a warning, usually of poison. The deciding factor in the direction that yellow will take is the amount of green or red mixed with the yellow. Yellows with more green have associations with sickness. Warmer yellows that have more red move toward yellow-orange. Having more red mixed into the yellow usually results in a more positive connotation.
 You'll note in this painting, The Bird and the Flower from my Psycho-Baroque series, I painted the sky yellow. This is due to the fact that I was conflicted when I did this painting ... I started out thinking of it from the perspective of the person getting its head bitten off - but because of a driver that cut me off and endangered my life - the next time I worked on the painting, I started looking at myself as the bird who was able to bite someone's head off! (Like maybe that rude driver?) So painting the sky yellow - a color that has both positive and negative meanings - perfectly mirrored this contrast of emotions and viewpoints that were influencing my perception during the painting of this picture.
Green, also, seems to have a dual nature. While we usually associate it with growth, prosperity, springtime, foliage and minty fresh, clean scents, green has further associations with possession of both things and the self. Yet, green also conjures up thoughts of mold, decay, nausea and jealousy. But it is most often associated with springtime renewal. Consequently, in times past, green was considered a powerful symbol of fertility and often worn at weddings in Europe.
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Blue symbolizes infinity and serenity due to its color connection with our seemingly never-ending sea and sky. This seems to be particularly true with the more greenish blue shades of aqua and teal. Cooler blues, on the other hand, tend to make us think more of sadness and depression.
For example in this painting, Dover Memory from my Landscapes series, even though the child in the painting is clearly deep in thought, using light and medium teal shades for both the water and the sky conveys an overall sense of peace and serenity - as if she was quietly anticipating something good about to happen. I believe if I had used cooler blues in this painting, it would have tended to make us think more of sadness and depression, as if the child was reflecting in sadness on what she was leaving behind. So, by using the teal blue, I created a positive impact rather than a negative one. This is a good example of how varying shades of the same color can evoke different feelings.
Purple is a very special color. This was the color used to represent the Roman God Jupiter. Initially only royalty was allowed to wear this color. This was mainly because they were the only ones who could afford this particular dye color. Purple was a very expensive dye to make and originally could only be obtained from the deep purple of mollusk shells. Once synthetic purple dye was discovered however, purple became an instant fashion craze. In fact the entire court of Queen Victoria immediately adopted purple as their favorite color. Purple was also perfect for their extended period of mourning after Prince Albert's death.
While purple is rarely used in advertising, when it is its royal associations link it to luxury. Purple represents not only sensuality and decadence (probably from the purple wine stains on the lips of the royals and aristocracy) but magic, mystery and spirituality as well.
When I was creating this painting, A Storm is Brewing from my Landscapes series, I wanted to instill a sense of mystery with a purple-gray stormy sky, which also implied the magic of the wind causing the tree branches to dance in the foreground.
But how do our color preferences affect the color choices we make in decor for our homes and workspaces? Several major studies on this have been conducted all over the world. The one consistent factor seems to be that living and workspace color choices are based on the function of the room. For example, in Japan findings showed that warm colors were preferred over cool colors for the interior of their homes. Yet theater lobbies used much brighter colors than the average living room.
In England, warm, saturated colors were used in bedrooms and neutrals were used in living rooms. Further, the style of décor within a room influenced the color choices for those in Great Britain, in addition to the room's function. Neutral white was linked to modern décor, dark red to Georgian and light green to Art Nouveau.
In the United States, a study of interior colors in the workplace found that workers preferred lower saturation (low intensity) colors for cubicle dividers - light blue, light aqua and off white, for example. Another study completed in 1986 showed that American workers are more productive in rooms with light colored walls. Darker spaces subdue and tend to make people more reflective. They relax us perhaps as a subconscious reference to the very beginning of our lives, in the dark security of the womb.
The second consistency throughout all of these studies is the need to show color in applied settings rather than in isolation.
Finally, color studies with children came up with some very interesting findings. In the United States we seem to have arbitrarily decided that infants need pastel tints of blue, green, pink or yellow. Then when children get to preschool age we decide that they prefer bright, primary colors, and we impose these color choices on our children. Yet color studies have shown that while some young children did actually prefer the bright, primary colors we have chosen for them, most actually selected a color palette with a far more varied hue and tonal range. Their color choices were quite sophisticated as well in that their color palettes were accurately color balanced.
So if color doesn't really have any intrinsic meaning, but we learn meanings for each color and have different color meanings from culture to culture . what does this all mean? Basically, enjoy color, all colors! Do not imprison yourself in a safe, beige tomb. Experiment with color. If there is a color you love but are afraid to use it because of some archaic, learned prejudice - put that aside and use that color and enjoy it! Trust your own instincts and preferences, learn what colors work the best for you . and surround yourself with all of the colors you love!
So you can easily refer back to this information on color when you take on your next decorating project - please take a moment now to
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