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Use the psychological effects of the color blue to create a cool, serene feel for your home. The psychological effects of the color blue are probably universal.
Almost everyone enjoys looking into a blue sky and across a lake or the sea – there is something calming about seeing an expanse of blue.
"The color blue can free the mind."
In interior decorating, you can use the color blue to create a reflective and ‘intellectual’ atmosphere.
It’s not easy to overheat emotionally and get upset or aggressive in a ‘cool’ environment - and the color blue has actually been shown to lower our blood pressure and heart rate.
The ‘see-through’ quality of air makes the blue color of the sky look distant. This psychological effect of the color blue is used in interior design to ‘expand’ the walls of a room by painting them in light shades of blue (it doesn’t work with dark blues!).
You can also use the color blue to cool down a hot, sunny room. Obviously, blue doesn’t actually lower the temperature, but it makes us feel cooler. (On the other hand, decorating a north-facing room in shades of blue will give it a distinctly 'arctic' feel, so maybe you shouldn't do it ... or if you absolutely must, keep a stack of blankets ready!).
The following snippet of advice is something I’ve never tried myself – please take it with a seriously large pinch of salt. I’ve read that the psychological effects of the color blue can help you restrain your appetite and lose weight. So you might consider painting your kitchen and/or dining room blue (and eating from blue plates). If you're going to try this, please
let me know
if it works!
Like purple, the color blue has royal connections, and was once very expensive to get hold of.
Lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone, had to be imported from far-away lands so that painters in Renaissance Europe could grind it to powder and make ultramarine (= ‘from-beyond-the-seas’) blue. They used it to paint the garments of saints and royalty (and lots of skies, of course).
But this is just the recent, European past of the color blue. For several thousand years, and all over the world, people have loved this color. Gorgeous blue glazes, dyes, and paints were developed as a result.
One of these is a special case: Indigo is a vegetable dye that can produce gorgeously deep, rich and very subtle hues of the color blue.
It’s my personal favorite blue, but one that I happen to share with millions of people around the globe. African, Asian and European cultures have used different varieties of the indigo plant to dye interior and clothing fabrics. For thousands of years. So it really is a lot of people's favorite color.
If you want to use the psychological effects of the color blue to create a meditative, spiritual environment, indigo is a good candidate for you. In classical Indian philosophy, it is the color associated with the 'third eye’, our capacity for intuitive understanding.
For information on the effects of other colors, please click any of the following links:
White,
Gray,
Black,
Brown
Yellow,
Orange,
Red,
Pink
Purple,
Green.
Click here for some general information about Color Psychology.
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