An Insight Into How Colors Make You Feel

Join us for a class (from home OR in the studio!) and make some artwork that will look great in any space in your home...
BUT give it some thought when selecting the painting AND the colors that you will add into it. They're more than just colors by name... They're actually quite influencing in so many areas of of life!

Do you feel anxious in a yellow room? Does the color blue make you feel calm and relaxed? Artists and interior designers have long believed that color can dramatically affect moods, feelings, and emotions. "Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions," the artist Pablo Picasso once remarked.
Color is a powerful communication tool and can be used to signal action, influence mood, and even influence physiological reactions. Certain colors have been associated with increased blood pressure, increased metabolism, and eyestrain. So how exactly does color work? How is color believed to impact mood and behavior?

*** Colors and emotions ***
The way different colors can affect emotions depends largely on a color’s brightness, shade, tint or tone and whether it’s cool or warm toned. Let’s take a look at some of the effects colors can have on how you feel:

-- Warm colors
Red, orange and yellow are next to each other on the wheel and are all warm colors. Warm colors often evoke feelings of happiness, optimism and energy. However, yellow, red and orange can also have an attention grabbing effect and signal danger or make you take action (think stop signs, hazard warnings and barrier tape). Red can also increase a person’s appetite.

-- Cool colors
Cool colors include green, blue, and purple. Cool colors are usually calming and soothing but can also express sadness. Purple is often used to help spark creativity as it’s a mixture of blue (calm) and red (intense). If a company wants to display health, beauty or security, incorporate these colors.

-- Happy colors
Happy colors are bright, warm colors like yellow, orange, pink and red. Pastel colors like peach, light pink or lilac can also have an uplifting effect on your mood. The brighter and lighter a color, the more happy and optimistic it will make you feel. Another way colors can create happy emotions is by combining multiple primary and secondary colors together for a youthful, colorful effect.

-- Sad colors
Sad colors are colors that are dark and muted. Grey is the quintessential sad color, but dark and muted cool colors like blue, green or neutrals like brown or beige can have a similar effect on feelings and emotions depending on how they’re used. In Western cultures black is often considered the color of mourning, whereas in some East Asian countries it’s white.

-- Calming colors
Cool colors like blue and green can make you feel calm. Pastel colors and particularly cool toned pastels like baby blue, lilac and mint have a calming and relaxing effect. Neutrals like white, beige and grey can also make you feel calm. The fewer colors you combine and the more simple and pared back a design is, the more calming it will feel.

-- Energizing colors
Strong, bright colors and neon colors can have a powerful effect on emotions. Colors like bright red, bright yellow and neon green can feel energizing and make you feel more alert, but can also be irritating on the eyes. These colors will grab your attention and stand out from their surroundings. Highly pigmented, strong colors like royal blue, turquoise, magenta and emerald green can also have a stimulating effect and make you feel refreshed and energized.




*** What is Color Psychology? ***
In its simplest terms, color psychology has become a popular area of color theory that assigns emotional and psychological connotations between colors and emotions. Many of these meanings are universal because they have an effect on the brain but some are only cultural. When traveling, it would be wise to research the accepted and non-accepted colors for any family or cultural event you are attending abroad.

Whether you like a color frequently depends on childhood memories and your association between colors and feelings. If your mother made you wear yellow one day and your classmates made fun of you, yellow is not likely to be your favorite color as an adult.
Sometimes a hue can have many connotations for you. For example, you may choose to wear an orange blouse one day because:
It lifts your mood; You are ready to act; You are feeling creative; You want to make a statement


-- Colors & Their Emotions --
* Red makes you feel passionate and energized.
- Orange makes you feel energized and enthusiastic.
* Yellow makes you feel happy and spontaneous.
- Green makes you feel optimistic and refreshed.
* Blue makes you feel safe and relaxed.
- Purple makes you feel creative.
* Pink makes you feel playful and romantic.
- Brown makes you feel down to earth.
* Black feels sophisticated, classic and serious.
- Gray feels serious and professional.
* White means minimalism, simplicity, and purity.




--- Some Of The Ways The Color Impacts Our Life:

** Colors influence our taste
Did you know food color can increase our appetite and impact our taste? Orange is known to increase appetite and is often used for food packages and in fast-food restaurants. Blue triggers disgust and loss of appetite because there are no natural foods in (bright) blue. These implicit color expectations may alter how we respond to food or beverages.


** Colors influence the perception of time
Red initialises a survival reaction to cope with potential danger. The perception of time in those situations shifts. Remember a situation in which you were nervous and cautious; the time just felt endless. Evolutionary, this allows you to pay attention to greater detail and act more precisely in this moment of danger. Thus, our ancestors were aware enough to grab the spade to protect themselves from the tiger just in time. How could this be useful? It depends on the context. In a busy restaurant with limited seating, you might want customers to leave quicker. But at an airport you might want to let travellers perceive waiting times for delayed flights as shorter instead of longer.


** Colors of clothes influence how we perceive people
The color of a person’s clothes influences which attributes and characteristics we link to her. It can be culturally biased through historic events or political groups, but that depends on the context.
Often, black is related to power, strength and authority. Think of black doctorate robes (intellectual power) or a black belt in karate (physical and mental strength). However, sports teams whose uniforms are black receive more penalties, and the players are associated with negative qualities such as aggression.

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