green, we’re more likely to think creatively.
•Seeing even a small amount of red briefly degrades our ability to think analytically.
•Looking at the color red gives us a burst of brute physical strength, so it may be a good option for the wall behind the washing machine or the one you see while lifting weights. However, looking at red won’t help with physical tasks that require specialized skills, such as hitting a tennis ball, or with an activity that requires strength over an extended period of time, such as riding a stationary bicycle.
•Viewing red also raises how energized we feel, generally.
•Red color signals “danger” and that cautious behavior is in order.
•Heterosexual people who see someone of the opposite gender against a red background think that other person is more attractive and desirable than when the same person is viewed against a different colored background.
•Looking at pink, particularly the color of Pepto-Bismol, is very calming.
•Seeing the color pink makes women feel more optimistic, and people generally associate the color pink with optimism.
Colors can be warm or cold, and their “temperature” matters—a lot:
•Warm colors are ones that you’re likely to see in a roaring fire: reds, oranges, and yellows. Cool ones wouldn’t be out of place in an ice cave: blues and greens, for example. Neutral colors like beiges, grays, browns, and even whites can be warmer or cooler. If you’re trying to tell if a neutral color or a purple is warm or cool, hold it against a surface that you know to be warm or cool, such as a wall painted orange or a wall painted green—you’ll know immediately if the sample is in the same “temperature” as the known surface. Cool colors such as a blue can be relatively warmer or cooler just as an orange can be relatively warmer or cooler. For the purposes of the points that follow, however, all oranges, yellows, and reds can be thought of as warm colors and all blues and greens can be seen as cool ones.
•When we’re in a warm-colored space, we actually do feel warmer than we do when we’re in an otherwise identical cool-colored space. The difference in apparent temperature is slight but enough in many cases to drive us to feeling just right, or too hot or too cold. If you live in an area where cool winter weather is more of a concern than summer heat, paint the entryway to your home or office a warm color. Or do you make your home in Miami or Caracas or some other place where summer heat is more of an issue than winter cold? Do the reverse, paint your entryway blue. We also expect warmer colored surfaces to be physically warmer than cooler colored ones.
•People seen against warm colors seem a little friendlier, so a warm color is a good option for anywhere you plan to hang out with others.
•People who have cool colors behind them seem more powerful, while people with warm colors behind them seem less powerful. Also, people in spaces where cooler colors predominate feel more powerful than those in spaces featuring warm colors. These links to power are important in offices.
•Warm colors do make it more likely we’ll feel hungry. This is a bad thing if you or someone you live with fights a daily battle with calories, but a very good thing if you are feeding a three-year-old who finds all foods, particularly ones you prepare, too disgusting to eat.
•Time seems to pass more slowly in rooms featuring warm colors and more quickly in ones that feature cool shades. These effects can be important in areas where people will need to wait or where they may not enjoy spending time.
•We’re drawn toward warm colors, so they’re great shades for the ends of long hallways that people need to walk down or for the wall behind a reception desk.
Colors can also be bright or dark. As mentioned earlier, brighter colors seem to have more white mixed into them than darker colors do, they could also be thought of as lighter colors:
•Spaces with lighter colored walls seem larger than ones with darker colored walls, even if their square footage is the same. If a wall is painted a lighter color, it seems farther away than when it is painted a darker color. The way that color affects apparent distance can be used to “right-shape” rooms that seem to have odd or undesirable dimensions. For example, make a very long and narrow room seem less oblong by painting the two walls that are farther from each other darker colors.
•Ceilings that are lighter colors seem farther from the floor than ceilings that are darker colors. Ceilings also seem higher when the walls are lighter colors than when they’re darker.
•We feel more comfortable when the darkest color in a space is on the floor under our feet, the lightest one is over our heads, and intermediary shades connect the two—this is the way colors are often distributed in nature. The ground is often a dark color, for example, and we stand on it. A dark rug on a white or very light-colored floor makes people feel more comfortable.
•When people are estimating the weight of an object, they are likely to feel that it weighs less if it’s a lighter color and more if it’s a darker one. Putting darker colors closer to the earth, lower on a wall, or on a piece of furniture, etc., and utilizing lighter colors higher up makes whatever is being viewed seem more stable.
•The same color paint will seem to be a darker if it’s painted on a surface with more texture.
Humans generally prefer to look at some hues and aren’t that keen on seeing others.
Across the planet, people are more likely to tell you that blues are their favorite colors than any other shades. That makes blues good options for walls if you are planning on selling your home soon.
Yellows, particularly very yellowy greens are the least popular colors worldwide.
It’s important to use preferred colors in a space whenever possible, because when we’re seeing preferred colors, smelling preferred smells, etc., we’re more likely to be in a good mood, which makes it more likely that we’ll be friendlier to other people, be better at problem-solving, and think more creatively, for starters, as discussed earlier.
Our minds don’t work as well in spaces filled with shades of gray and white; we’re so bored by them that our minds drift toward unpleasant thoughts. Humans find gray and white areas less pleasant places to be than ones that feature greens, blues, reds, oranges, purples, and even yellows.
When we see more saturated colors, we feel more stimulated, and brighter colors put us in a more upbeat mood. Colors that are not very saturated but are relatively bright are relaxing—a light sage green is an example of a familiar shade that meets these criteria. Not very saturated but bright colors are also good choices for places where people need to concentrate. To feel more invigorated, use colors that are really saturated but not very bright, like jewel tones—the color of a perfect rich emerald, for example. The bluish shade on the walls in the cover photo for this book is relaxing to look at, while the blue upholstery on the chair is a more energizing shade to view.
To structure future discussions of colors, we can use the following color family names:
Neutrals: The colors of sand, clouds, and light-colored stones
Hazy colors: Deeper grays and khaki greens
Pastels: Light colors and saturated
