The science of color in life

Have you ever thought about the colors in our life?

👉 Colors surround us and have a huge effect on us.

👉 They are being used by marketers worldwide to influence your thinking.

👉 Check out some less known facts about the psychology of colors. 👀

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Color in everyday life

Marketing and advertising

Color and color vision are one of the most important, key aspects in our lives when it comes to living and perceiving the world as we do.

We as human beings are visual creatures, meaning about 90% of the information we take in from the surrounding environment is in the form of visual input through our eyes.

Color vision was, is and will always be important to us.

It was a key evolutionary trait that our ancestors developed that helped them survive, thrive and spread around the world.

It affects us deeply and the majority of the time subconsciously without us even realizing it.

In today’s capitalist, saturated market, no one knows this better than brands and companies themselves.

Striving to attract attention, fighting the silent battle for the customer’s dollar every day.

Brands and companies have developed a series of key tactics to sell their products and services.

They use the right colors in their logos, marketing and advertising to invoke specific feelings in their target customers.

Color science was definitely not invented by brands and has naturally existed long before companies.

Putting the information gathered and researched to use in the marketing and sales field is definitely a specific trait of the 20th and 21st-century company.

The effects of color on human subconsciousness have been documented in detail by various scientists over the years with results showing mostly similar effects of certain colors on people and their psyche.

Below listed are some basic colors we see in the environment and in our everyday life and the documented subconscious effects they have been reported to have on the human mind:

Red

The color is widely recognized as the color of passion, romance and love, but has also widely been reported to be associated with danger, excitement and urgency.

Usually most widely used by stores, brands and companies when they want to attract attention to their products and create a sense of urgency, during sales for example.

Think of the STOP sign and the red signal on traffic lights.

Green

Being the color of grass, trees and nature in general, naturally, the color is associated with the environment, relaxation, safety, health, life, healing, etc.

Interestingly enough, because of the nature of the world and the economy, we have created, one of the things the human brain most frequently connects green to is money.

Blue

Associated mostly with peace, stability, calmness and tranquility.

It’s also the color most widely used in social media design and layout, the how and why of which are a topic for another article (spoiler alert: blue can be dangerous for your eyesight and attention span).

Yellow

Associated with joy, energy, cheerfulness and warmth. Like red, it may also be used to create a sense of urgency, caution and emergency.

Gray

Think of all the buildings surrounding us, think of the concrete jungle – gray is most widely connected to stability, security, strength of character, authority and maturity.

Black and White

For colors that are technically not considered colors at all, our minds seem to connect black and white to various different things.

Sophistication, power, mystery, formality, evil and death for black..

..and freshness, hope, light, goodness, purity, cleanliness and simplicity for white, just to name a few.

Of course, those are just a few of the colors companies use in their logos, marketing and advertising.

Going into full detail about every color and how it affects us would take hundreds of articles and following the ways companies carefully craft their logos.

From design to colors and even color hues would be practically impossible as those are industry secrets.

The negative effects of color on health

Naturally, we need color. Color in life is what defines our sight and makes our world vivid and vibrant.

Should we be afraid of too much color though?

Way too much of a certain color can have a negative impact on a person’s health.

It has been reported that “overdosing” on certain colors like red and yellow, which induce feelings of urgency and excitement can have a negative impact on our health, resulting in high blood pressure and anxiety.

On the other hand “overdosing” on blue (coincidentally used in a lot in social media design and layout as a primary color) can make us feel too calm and relaxed and lose track of time.

Endlessly scrolling as time passes, subconsciously dozing off and ignoring the world around us.

Additionally, blue is one of the colors the retina cannot block from causing damage to our eyes.

As red light gets blocked, blue light can pass right through and with prolonged use of blue light-emitting technology.

Blue light can cause health issues connected to sore eyes, migraines and headaches.

The takeaway

As already mentioned, going into full detail about every color in life and the way it can impact us negatively or positively would take a lot of time.

But in today’s world where we’re constantly bombarded with advertisements and logos anywhere we go.

Being educated on the how and why of advertising, marketing and color science can be beneficial to us.

We can stop ourselves from making impulse purchases based on subconscious decisions we make without even realizing it and prevent the negative effects from them.

Most importantly, however, knowing color in life and the way colors influence us can help us reduce exposure to an excess of certain colors, preventing health issues.

We ourselves love color, but like everything we know, it should be used in moderation.

The software we developed helps you do just that! – controlling how much and which colors you see every day from your computer screen, helping you regain control.