Humans are visual creatures, and colors influence everything in daily life, from influencing your purchase decisions to defining your mood and depicting your cultural beliefs.
Not just mentally, and emotionally but colors have a vibration affecting you physically and psychologically too. Different psychological effects of color on human behavior can be seen hence, many experts deduce the meaning behind color choices and leverage the study of color in their personal and professional lives. This study of color is color psychology.
Colors Are Vital To The Human Experience:
Color is a communication tool, through color, you feel; you connect; you heal. Colors in the red area of the spectrum known as warm colors, evoke either feeling of warmth or feelings of anger and hostility. On the other hand, colors on the blue side of the spectrum, cool colors can call to mind feelings of either sadness or calmness.
Color Psychology impacts your daily life since it allows you to harness the power of individual color frequencies to heal your body, positively influence emotions, and achieve a reviewed sense of inner harmony. For instance, you feel relaxed in presence of the green of nature or when you experience warmer colored hues like browns or golds in professional spaces, you feel more involved, cooler hues of blue or white make you feel cooler. From cultural references, black is the color for funerals in the west signifying solemnity; while in India you wear white to depict tradition and its purity.
Let’s Deep Dive Further Into How Color Psychology Impacts Your Daily Life:
# Brand Advertisements Impacting Your Purchase Decisions
The idea for picking a logo isn’t only the brand recall but also the emotion it evokes when you recall. Color plays such an important role in branding that companies like Cadbury, and Barbie have trademarked their defining shade. This sounds right because as a user you’d be able to identify a brand with just the colors it uses, right? Colors have tons of associations and meanings which differ in the effect it generates on people to people. No two people respond to colors the same way.
- Red: Evokes excitement and calls to the mind of the young and bold. Coca-Cola and Netflix employ the power of red, leveraging its welcoming allure.
- Orange: You can not avoid ‘orange’. Depiction of cheer, confidence, and childlike, the orange color is seen with brands that would like to portray themselves as fun and friendly. Amazon.com uses orange to be more noticeable and actionable. Nickelodeon and Fanta are other brands leveraging the zeal of orange
- Yellow: The color of the sun evokes optimism, clarity, and warmth. Brands that are either kid-friendly, joyful, and stimulating like McDonald’s or Lays use Yellow, or brands that are bringing awareness like National Geographic, and Star Wars.
- Green: Earth may be a blue planet but it felt green. Green is calm, and serene and defines growth, health, and wellness. Animal Planet and Whole Foods utilize green to convey these ideas.
- Blue: Blue color psychology finds its association with security, dependability, and strength. A handy go-to color for any brand that prides itself on its professionalism, reliability, and hardiness. Most of the brands associated with finance, such as PayPal, Capital One, Visa, and Bank of America, and even tech brands, such as Dell, IBM, Intel, and AT&T, use blue color psychology to cultivate trust and dependability. are just a few of the financial companies using blue in their color schemes. Blue with its varied shades can also be seen as the color of water or sky, depicting calmness, peace, and reassurance.
- Purple: Explore the universe, and spark your imagination with the “anything is possible” vibe, brands use the color of royalty to draw you in when you are looking for an experience that is a step away from the ordinary. Hallmark, Monster, and Cadbury leverage purple as their branding colors to exude glorious impossibilities
- Grey and other neutrals: Apple, Samsung, Nissan, BBC, and Mercedez-Benz are bringing balance and calm by leveraging the power of silverish hues. It is classic, sophisticated, and methodical.
- Brown: Brown is earthy, rugged, outdoor, rustic, and woodsy, and suitable for furniture but as you change the shade to chocolate or coffee of Nespresso, Hershey’s, brown could be delicious, rich, or appetizing.
- Black: Black suggests elegance, luxury, and sophistication. Color choice for brands like Prada, Rolls Royce, and Chanel.
- White: All colors converge in white making it a color of purity, positivity, and enlightenment. On the other hand, it can also be seen as sterile, cold, and clinical in your mind.
# Decor Impacting Your Moods and Behavior
Do you feel anxious in a yellow room? Does the color blue make you feel calm and relaxed? When a space is designed, colors play a pivotal role. Colors affect mood and behavior but also manipulate how we perceive the size and temperature of a place. Artists and interior designers use color psychology to design spaces keeping all aspects in mind.
- White or light colors are painted on walls or spaces to make them appear bigger
- Blue color psychology when designing spaces is generally leveraged in the common area of an office and is a safe choice, satisfying the majority
- Yellow is usually found with caution signs on a wet floor or construction area and hence many designers avoid painting spaces yellow to not displease you
- Pink calms you down hence, a choice for spaces where the probability of heated discussion is higher, maybe board rooms
- When warmer hues over-stimulate the senses, making you tense, and leading to productivity, under-stimulating colors can also distract you or make you feel bored easily.
# Movies Impacting Your Experience and Emotions
In movies, color schemes set the tone of a scene, to ensure that you sense the emotion of the scene rightly. Even before actors do their part, colors will tell you whether it’s a romantic scene, gloomy, war or death scene. Joyous and celebratory scenes are usually seen in warm color schemes whereas cold tones are leveraged in sad, melancholic scenes. Color psychology and its application in the film industry is an art in itself.
Color psychology impacts your daily life in more ways than you think. From varied industries, individual preferences, resulting emotions, and cultural standings, color plays an important role. It impacts your mental, emotional and physical well-being. It’s detrimental to your actions and reactions throughout the day and experts are much aware of this fact. Hence, color psychology research is a time-taking activity in finding the right color, tone, and shade for a brand or before designing a space.
So next time you commit to a color or decide to paint your space, do keep the significance and associations of these colors in your mind.
