Understanding how color affects your mood is important if you want to create an atmosphere of peace and mental calm.
In life, there’s a lot of different elements that affect your mood and mental health, including the weather, food, physical activity, sleep, and much more. As we go about our daily lives, it’s important to take note of the various ways we can improve our overall well-being.
One of the easiest ways to do so is to bring mindfulness to the way we interact with the world around us.
By becoming aware of the various shades of blue in our surroundings, we can better appreciate the beauty of nature and the calming effects of being outside. We can also learn to notice the subtle changes in our emotional states and adjust accordingly.
Color Affects Your Mental State and Well-Being
Colors are used by both design professionals and homeowners to create specific feelings in people. Corporations also use color to evoke specific feelings in consumers.
For example;
- Orange is used to help people feel happy.
- Apple uses gray to encourage a feeling of neutrality and modernity.
- Animal Planet uses green for its logo because it encourages people to feel healthy and grow.
However, studies show that people tend to associate certain colors with emotions, but these associations may be subjectively determined by individuals’ cultures, religions, upbringings, etc.
However, studies show that people tend to associate certain colours with emotions, but these associations may be subjectively determined by individuals’ cultures, religions, upbringings, etc.
Check out the color emotion chart to see which emotions are associated with each color.
| Colors | Triggered Emotions |
| Purple | Authority, Royal, Mystery, Creative |
| Pink | Fun, Sensitive, Calm, Warmth, Respect |
| Blue | Cool, Content, Control, Determination, Goals |
| Green | Wellbeing, Healthy, Nourishment, Growth |
| Yellow | Fun, Creative, Happy, Energy, Intellect |
| Orange | Playful, Freedom, Warmth, Joy, Optimism |
| Red | Love, Death, Passion, Anger, Emotional |
We tend to think of blue as a happy, positive color, but when it comes to our emotions, blue has an impact too.
What Effects Blue Light Has on Our Mental Health?
Everyone has a favorite colour, or a colour that they naturally gravitate toward. When you’re feeling down or you’re depressed, people will often refer to it as “being in the blues”.
Why is this? In an earlier research carried out in the 1930s, Siegfried E Katz from the New York Psychiatric Institute reported that people who were suffering from depression had a strong preference for shades of blue.
Effectively, the research involved exposing 134 hospital patients to small squares of colors.
The experiment examined six colors – red, orange, yellow; green, blue and purple. Patients were asked to pick the best color and then pick the second best, and so forth, until they had picked every single one.
Blue was the most popular choice overall.
If you’re suffering from mental illness, then yes, you should probably avoid the colour yellow. However, saying things like “I feel depressed today” doesn’t mean that you actually are!
On the flip side of things, some people may feel confident when wearing the color red because they associate it with passion, power, and excitement.
What Effects Does Green Have On Our Mental Health?
The color green is often associated with good things such as freshness, nature, life, hope, peace and harmony.
These associations make people feel better about themselves and their surroundings. Green also symbolizes money because the word “green” comes from the word “coin”.
So if your logo contains the color green then you might get customers who associate your brand with wealth and prosperity.
Green can have big advantages for your mental health. Surround yourself with greens of green can promote feelings of restorative and freshness.
Spending time in the woods can be an effective way of balancing your head and mood. The various hues of green in a natural setting manifest sensations of wellness and calmness.
Green is a color often associated with regeneration. When we charge our phones or play video game, we see green on our screens.
Surrounding yourself with shades of green at your house might help you feel calmer.
Effects Of Grey On Your Mood And Mind
Green is a calming color, but shades of grey are just as calming. They’re not quite as bright as green, so they don’t cause as strong an emotional response.
However, because they’re neutral, they can be used to create a sense of tranquility.
Grey is neither here nor there, right between black & white. When we are anxious or stressed, we often have extreme ideas that we put through a Negative Filter.
We often refer to good or bad with little room in the centre. This ‘Closed minded’ approach to thinking does not allow us t o se e the Bigger Picture in different situations.
Grey – Whilst maybe appearing dull and boring – can bring about that “Mid-Ground” that we need with our Thoughts.
Grey helps people feel strong, capable and positive about themselves. When we suffer from anxiety, stress or depressive symptoms, we often experience a loss of confidence.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) can help us gain back control and learn how to think positively again.
By challenging negative thinking patterns, we can start to realize that we do have choices and that there are things we can change. We can also learn new ways of coping with difficult situations.
Gray has been used for centuries to represent strength, stability, and endurance. It also symbolizes structure, often found in the foundations of building.
Do you think gray is boring? It might be fun to see if it helps you relax and open up your brain and emotions.
Effects Of Yellow On Your Mood
Brightly colored objects such as yellows, greens, blues, reds, purples, pinks, oranges, browns, and whites are known collectively as primary colors.
They are the basic building blocks of color. These colors are additive; they mix together to create new hues. Red + orange = pink, blue + purple = violet, white + black = gray.
When mixed together, these three colors make every possible shade of the rainbow. Primary colors are also subtractive – if you take them out, nothing else remains.
For example, if you remove red from an object, then only blue and white remain.
Studies have found that light blue in the right shade can help boost productivity and happiness levels. While dark blue is associated with sadness and depression, light blue is said to encourage calmness and relaxation.
Blue is also used as an alert color on traffic lights to warn motorists of danger ahead. It gives off a sense of security so people feel comfortable around it.
Too much sunlight can also cause forgetfulness and lack of concentration. It’s believed that too much sun causes memory issues by stimulating the brain, which can lead to increased stress levels.
Yellow is so strong that it’s best used in small amounts. If you put too much yellow into one space, it becomes overwhelming. Instead, focus on using yellow in smaller spaces, like a sunflower on your desk or a yellow wall in a hallway.
How The Color Purple Affects Your Mood
In choosing the color palette for the new site, we wanted to create an atmosphere that was both energising and calming.
We decided to go with a combination of blue and red, because they’re such strong colors. They also work really well together.
Blue is a great energy booster, whereas red is known to calm us down. So combining these two colors gives us a nice balance between the two.
Purple can make us feel wise, luxurious, creative, and different. It’s also a little more interesting than other colors.
When we look at a rainbow, it’s often the purple or the violets that stand out to us. Although beautiful, it’s a gentle and welcoming shade that many women enjoy.
It’s also a good energy for calming down and bringing peace. Red and blue together create an energizing effect. When these two colors are combined they produce a calming effect.
If you surround yourself with purple things, they can help improve your mood and give you a feeling of creativity. Purple is a distracting color that has a mysterious quality to it.
And How the Color White Affects Your Mood?
Neutral colors can be used to create an inviting atmosphere. They also help to make your website stand out from others.
When choosing a background, think about what kind of mood you’d like to set. Is it bright? Dark? Or somewhere in between?
Consider how much contrast you want to create between your foreground (text) and background. For example, if you want a dark background, choose a light colored foreground such as gray or black.
On the other hand, if you want a bright background, choose a darker foreground such as blue or red.
Because white makes us associate it with spaces that are clear and clean, we tend to associate it with things that are clean and hygienic.
When combined with other colors, white can help lift our moods even further. White has a strong, pure, and clean feeling that can create mental states of clearness when we’re feeling down.
How Color Affects Your Mood And Mental Health Then?
Of course, all these things are subjective, just like our previous discussion about what constitutes good writing.
What works for one person may not work for another. For instance, I love the color red. However, if someone told me that they hated the color red, then I would probably agree.
That said, my personal experience tells me that I am drawn to the color red. In addition, I know that I cannot tolerate the color yellow.
Knowing which colors affect you most helps you use them to create an environment that makes you happy.
For my own mental well-being, I prefer to be surrounded by natural elements. This way I feel good inside and out. It’s achieved through spending time outside, and having access to organic materials indoors.