The Emotional Effects Of Color

Interior Design is one of the decorative arts that obviously makes extensive use of color. When purchasing art for the home or office color is a necessary consideration. The room itself become a work of art creating specific emotional impact. Individual works of fine or decorative art are thus incorporated into a larger scheme. Art galleries are usually white or neutral to avoid impacting individual works of art. But we don't live in commercial art galleries. One should however remember that the frame and mat are part of the individual picture. The picture becomes part of the room.

If colors are considered as falling into the general families of warm, cool or neutral, it is possible to summarize the implications of each group in a way that seem obvious.

Warm colors are associated with the impact that is suggested by the word warm. We speak of a warm greeting, a warm friendship, or a warm atmosphere. In color terms, the hues on the warm side of of the color circle, red, orange and yellow, are generally understood as being comfortable, cozy, homelike and pleasant.

Cool colors that fall on the green, blue, violet side of the circle are not surprising, associated with calm, relaxation and more contemplative experience. At an extreme cool colors can become depressive and negative in psychological impact.

Neutral colors, white, black, gray and chromatic colors desaturated with a high content of neutrals are also in this category. They fall between warm and cool, having a less intense psychological impact, which in its extreme form, may be thought as bland or boring.

Some relations to color are inborn. The excitement associated with intense color, particularly red and related warm colors seems to be an inborn reaction. The reaction to solid white, black or grey similarly seems to come from a lack of stimulation from these colors that is also inborn. Some associations are rather universal because they come from very simple and basic nature such as sky, sea, grass, leaves and berries. In the modern world some of these basic associations are provided through the indirect experience of images provided by art, photography, television, and other graphic media.

Image by Allan Richter (c)

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