Colors: Their Connotations and Perceived Meanings

Throughout the ages, colors have been used to evoke sure emotions, and an examination of the history of color offers spellbinding insights into the human condition, as well as showing how different cultures have developed different attitudes about color. Here are a few examples of what discrete colors have come to represent over the years:

Red

Yellow Pages

Red has traditionally been connected with courage and love in Western culture, but in China, red is the color of happiness and good fortune. In fact, white has traditionally been the color most preferred for wedding dresses in America, but the Chinese prefer to dress their brides in red.

Orange

Orange is thought about a warm color, maybe because it has evoked the feeling of fire, all the way back to mankind's earliest beginnings. Painting walls a subtle orange, leaning toward a warm brown, stimulates the appetite and can sell out tension. However, as the orange color becomes brighter, it begins to take on a high energy feel and can lead to anxiety.

Brown

Brown is another warm and comforting color, stimulating the appetite and assuredly making food taste better. That makes coffee brown, in all intensities, with or without the cream, an ideal candidate for dining rooms.

Yellow

Since it's all the time been connected with the sun, yellow has traditionally been thought about a cheerful color. Yellow is also the first color most habitancy see in early spring, when the daffodils begin to bloom. However, there seems to be an East/West cultural inequity when it comes to yellow. The Chinese revere yellow enough to have thought about it the imperial color since the 10th century, yet some Western studies have shown that yellow is many people's least popular color.

Green

Green is another color that has both an up and down side. It's connected with the new growth of spring, prosperity, and clean, fresh air, yet it can also carry a negative connotation, in terms of mold, nausea, and jealousy. Throughout the ages, green has most often been thought about to represent fertility, and during the 15th century, green was the most popular option of for the wedding gowns of European brides.

Blue

Because it's connected with the color of the sea and the sky, blue has come to symbolize serenity and infinity. That's especially true of the more greenish shades of blue, such as aqua and teal. On the other hand, cooler shades of blue can have a tendency to cause feelings of sadness.

Purple

Over the millennia, purple has been connected with royalty in Western civilizations, due to the strangeness and expense complicated in producing purple dye, which was made from a particular species of mollusk shell. Even today, when purple can be produced just as inexpensively as any other color, the use of purple is still thought about to represent elegance and sophistication.

There are stories and connotations for every color, and different cultures assign different meanings to colors. For instance, American brides generally prefer white wedding dresses, while many Asian cultures dress their brides in black, reserving white for funerals. But regardless of what culture on is from, one thing is certain: colors will all the time have effects on human beings and should be thought about thought about when decorating a home.

(c) Copyright 2004, Jeanette J. Fisher. All ownership reserved.

Colors: Their Connotations and Perceived Meanings