Have you ever wondered why your favourite fast food joints are often decorated in red and yellow and the lights are as harsh as the seats are hard? Well, red is said to be appetite-inducing, and because red and yellow are strong, stimulating colours you can't stand to be around them for too long, which is handy because these chains want a fast throughput of customers.
High end restaurants are often dark blue as this is a relaxing, cocooning colour (you also don't find much naturally blue food so the food looks good in this setting too), and this together with low level lighting and comfy seating encourages you to linger, and spend more money.
The psychology of colour is a subject that fascinates me and one I can wax lyrical about for hours on end! Luckily for you I'm going to make an effort to keep it short-ish.
In the 90s, my mum and her best friend 'had their colours done'. The consultant made note of their hair colour, eye colour, and skin colour, identified from this whether they would suit warm colours or cool colours, and then gave them a palette of colour shades that would suit them. To this day they carry this palette around with them and try and buy items of clothing that match these colours. The result is that they look great in whatever they are wearing and that makes them feel good about themselves.
Now imagine if those clothes were paint colours. Wouldn't it be amazing if you felt great in every room in your house?
The point I want to get across to you today is that colour affects mood, it affects how you feel in a space.
For example, my dining room is green. Green sits halfway between the warm and cool colours on the colour wheel and therefore is said to be the colour of harmony, a relaxing colour. Pre-Covid we loved entertaining and whenever we had anyone round for dinner we found that once we sat down in the green dining room people didn't really want to leave as they felt so comfortable and relaxed in there and we would sit in there until they left. (Hopefully this was also down to our hosting skills, not just the colour of the walls!)
The quality of a space can be positively affected by colour and, of course, the opposite is true.
We are all spending more time than ever within our own four walls and so what I'm saying to you is that you can improve how you feel in that space by the colours you choose. We need to make use of every available metre of space in our homes these days so it's worth investigating colours to make every space as welcoming and usable as possible. Do you have a room that feels too small? Colour can help with that. Do you have a room that feels stark and not very cosy? Colour can help with that. Do you have an uninspiring office space? Colour can help with that (as can plants. I may have mentioned it before a couple of times, but plants are generally the answer to most things!).
It is my mission to move at least some of this stoic nation away from greige and towards richer, more positive colours.
Of course the success of any space is not just down to colour, it is also the natural light, the furnishings, the textures, the lighting, and the placement of the furniture (so much to think about!). That said, if a room is not working for you then it can probably be easily remedied by someone who knows what they're doing. If something is jarring in your home, or making you unhappy, then please get in touch and I'll help you restore the balance.
Comments