I'm feeling a little Blue

The short answer is yes. The colors around us do affect the mood that we have. Red can make us excitable and blue or green pastels can calm us down, but there is more to it than that. While there are general associations with mood when it comes to color, the reaction that an individual person can have can be different than someone else. Just like everything else in life there are people who don’t fit into the ‘norms’ that society has, and the reaction to color is no exception to that. Different hues of color can also affect mood in the sense that a dark blue might have a different feeling than a light blue. It’s believed that a lot of these opinions and feelings about colors start in childhood and that people frame their opinions of color very early in life.

Studying young children and their response to color fits into the molds that researchers have seen with adults and how they react to color as well. Whether children are taught these responses by the way their parents react, however, seems unlikely because color – other than learning the names of the shades – isn’t really a topic of discussion. Most people don’t talk about the way that color makes them feel. They don’t really discuss it, it’s just something that is…and it’s hard to define.

The psychological and physiological changes that come along with it are marked and noticeable, though, and that shows that the body responds to color even if the brain isn’t actively thinking about whether the color makes the person feel a certain way.

The hue, the saturation, and the brightness of the color all have to be evaluated when it comes to what kind of effect color has on mood. For example, purple is considered to be a power color, but lavender is not – it is more mystic, soothing, and spiritual. It would be a good color for a bedroom or a meditation room, but not such a good color for a room where work should get done or where a person needs to feel empowered. Studies have also shown that girls and boys are about the same in their opinions on color, but girls do tend to be more positive about brighter colors and more negative about darker colors, where boys don’t seem to have that same connotation with bright and dark colors.