Colours have superpowers!
On top of making our world a beautiful place, they are also full of meaning, representing different emotions, temperatures, life events, and much more.
Let’s try this. Read this list of words and let me know which colour each word made you think of:
Anger
Happiness
Cold
Grief
Luxury
Purity
Pride
There are some pretty universal associations between colours and emotions.
Colours on the yellow-red-orange side of the spectrum make us think of heat, and warmth, but also strong emotions like love, anger and aggression.
On the blue-green side of the spectrum on the other hand we find cold, nature, clean, peace, and calm emotions.
It would be a pretty safe bet to say that your list above probably looked a little something like this: red, yellow, blue, black, black/silver, white. And I really hope that the last one made you think of a rainbow.
If that’s close, then you probably also grew up in Europe or North America.
Different cultures associate colours with different things. For example, in the West, we wear white for weddings and black for funerals, while in India it's red for weddings and white for funerals.
In fact, which emotions we associate with different colours is highly dependent on our upbringing, personal preferences, the era we're born, etc. There's no one-colour-fits-all rule, even though marketers are trying their best to use the psychology of colours to influence our behaviour.
What we know for sure is that colours do evoke emotions! Through our art, we can lean on the colours that make us happy and create those little moments of joy when we need them most.
Go go rainbow power!
PS: if you’re interested (and you will be!) in the history, politics, and meaning of colours I totally recommend the awesome book The Secret Life of Colours by Kassia St Clair!