Color My World

Okay. Work with me! You’re sitting at your desk. Pick up an object. Describe it—but don’t use any words related to color. As you can see, if we are describing an object, we can use a wide variety of terms such as curved, concave, large, small, heavy, light, rough, smooth, etc. By contrast, we can’t put a color in our hands and feel it, weigh it, smell it, or taste it. Color is purely visual. Yet color is, for most of us, the first thing we see when we open our eyes in the morning, and the last thing we see each night before we go to sleep. Color affects everything from our choice of food and clothing to our moods.

People began using color in their environments to achieve specific purposes very early in our history. About 1500 BC the Egyptians were already building temples where color healing took place. Sunlight shone through colored gems, such as rubies and sapphire, onto people seeking healing.

Our response to color is inherent. Until the age of about six years, children who are asked to sort colored shapes automatically divide them by color rather than shape. Throughout life, we continue to use color as a cue for interpreting what we see…for example:

• grey hair tells us of middle age,
• grey landscapes speak of cities,
• a red apple tells of its ripeness,
• red traffic lights bring us to a halt,
• the color of a stone can even tell us of its geographical origin.

As you can see, colors can sway our thinking, change our actions, and cause reactions.

We tend to think about color as a purely physical phenomenon experienced by our sense of sight alone. But color is actually a form of energy, and it is active at not only physical levels, but also at mental, emotional, and spiritual levels.

• Physically, colors at the red end of the spectrum tend to make the body tense and increase blood pressure, while colors at the blue end of the spectrum promote relaxation and lower blood pressure.
• Mentally, a red room (a warm, advancing color) seems smaller than a blue room (a cool, receding color) of the exact same size.
• Emotionally, red tends to excite us, while blue tends to make us feel calmer.

It surprises many people to know that even blind people experience the effects of color—they are receptive to the wavelengths or energies of colors, sometimes even more so than sighted people, due to their enhanced sensitivity to non-visual stimuli. Some visually impaired people are sensitive enough to identify a color with great accuracy just by feeling the density of the air that surrounds it. The air over a red surface, for example, feels denser than the air next to blue.

Color has many physiological and psychological effects on us. In many cases our emotional “extremes” are the outward display of imbalances or blockages in the flow of color energies into and out of the body. Color is crucial to good interior design in any environment. (And the nice thing is that a can of paint can be one of least expensive ways to create a desired atmosphere!)

When you begin choosing colors, remember that each room that you are decorating can be colored for a specific purpose. In general, note that:

• Warm colors tend to stimulate activity, while cool colors produce a calming effect. Bright colors promote alertness.
• To make a small room look larger, use cool colors or neutrals, which tend to recede. Note that an entirely neutral color scheme (all browns/tans or grays) can lead to apathy and indifference. Be sure to enhance with color accents!
• Another way to make a room look larger is to use monochromatic color schemes and lighter colors. A monochromatic scheme is one that uses different tints and shades of the same base color. Don’t forget to take the ceiling into account—a ceiling painted a light tint of your wall color will be more effective in enlarging the space than a white ceiling will be, simply because there is less contrast between the painted walls and the tinted ceiling.
• To make larger rooms feel more “human-scale,” use stronger or more intense colors.
• And to make those large rooms more “cozy,” use warm colors, which tend to advance. Contrary to what you might think, colors appear more intense in larger rooms than they do in smaller rooms (you’re using a lot more of the color in a large space), so use care in your large areas!

Come back in November for more on the psychology and physiology of specific colors, and join me in December to learn how colors relate to our chakras and can be used to ease our physical and emotional stresses! Happy decorating!

Melissa Andron and her husband Lee own Realm Design Studio. They are “designers of real and virtual environments.” Lee handles the virtual environments with web site design and programming for single-person firms to Fortune 500 companies. Melissa handles the real environments with interior design for homes, offices, churches, and medical practices.

Melissa’s passion (besides her puppies, Samson and Loki!) is the design of healing environments. She loves to create environments that nourish our spirits by addressing various aspects of design including not only space planning and color, but also art, music, aromas, textures, and other elements that directly affect all of our senses.