Here’s Why Colors Are So Important to Humans
Here’s Why Colors Are So Important to Humans
Have you ever looked at a painting, flower, piece of furniture, or even a simple object like a spoon and wondered why you were so drawn to it? Why it made you feel a certain way? Why, for example, the walls of the red house in Pompei were painted that way, or the Chase Bank logo is blue? As an architect, I ask myself these questions every day.
My work is so rooted in colors that I can easily say it is the first design element I look to when I want to create emotional connections. Colors are crucial in design because they carry meanings, memories, symbols, cultures, stories, and especially feelings.
When we are asked to list a series of colors, we usually think of the same 7-8 shades: white, black, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. We can probably add a few to it if we include pink, gray, sky blue, and a few others, but our list is not that vast.
In reality, an accurate study of colors should include hundreds or thousands of shades as our world is made of more than just 10-20 colors (a typical computer screen can show more than 16 million shades). That’s why when we say green, we should also specify if it’s a warm green or a cold one, dark or bright, maybe even if it’s fluorescent or not. Are we looking at it against a white wall, a black or a blue one? Is the light in the room from an incandescent bulb or indirect sunlight? Is it morning or evening?
The same shade can be perceived in many different ways in various situations, and even when we look at it in the same exact conditions, we cannot be sure that others see it in precisely the same way we do. That’s why the study of colors is so incredibly complex, and there are no real answers or truths. The emotions color choices can invoke when designing spaces are important to consider, as the difference between a warm versus cool tone or the placement of contrasting colors can drastically shift the vibe a space elicits.
What Is Color?
Before we can get into why colors are so important in everything we do, we must first break down what color actually is. Don’t worry, we won’t get too deep into the science of it since this isn’t an area I claim to be intimately familiar with.
Generally speaking, color is a series of electromagnetic waves that are absorbed or reflected by an object. Whatever wavelength isn’t absorbed is what is reflected back to us. So when you see a green leaf, what is happening is that the leaf is absorbing every array of electromagnetic waves except for the ones associated with that particular shade of green.
As any kid learns fast when mixing paint, the more colors you add to the mix, the more it becomes a brownish-black tone. This is because what you are actually doing is reducing the waves reflected from the paint (i.e. The waves that would be reflected by color #1 are now absorbed by color #2 and vice-versa). In theory, if you add all colors to the mix, you end up with black because you are removing all electromagnetic waves reflecting from it. On the opposite end of the spectrum, any object that is pure white is actively reflecting all of the wavelengths that exist and absorbing none.
Light works in the opposite way because it’s not reflected but comes directly at you. When you add all colors to it, you obtain white. This was demonstrated by the various tests done by Isaac Newton in 1672, when he split light with a prism, creating a rainbow of all colors, which he was able to successfully convert back to white light with the help of an opposite prism.
It may be shocking to learn, but you, me, and everyone else on Earth have never seen (and will likely never be able to see) the vast majority of the colors that exist in the universe. It’s not because they’re not found on Earth. They are actually all around you at this very second. The sad truth is that we as humans aren’t equipped with the proper physical (and cultural) tools to distinguish these colors, or waves to be precise, probably because we didn’t need them to survive in the millions of years of our evolution.
The tools we lack are what are known as receptors or cones. These are found in the eye and are what our brains use to identify and separate various shades of light. Most people have three receptors, with each one of them giving us the ability to see red, green, and blue light, respectively. A few people lack one or more of these receptors and cannot see shades of a certain color, while others (roughly 1 in 33,000 people) cannot distinguish colors at all and see the world in black and white.
Certain other species such as birds, lizards, and shrimps are able to see a much wider range of colors and can do so in even more conditions than any human, which is largely due to the number of cones they have in their eyes. With an astonishing 16 different cones, mantis shrimp can see approximately ten times as many wavelengths as a human even if, by living in extremely dark places, they probably never saw any of it. They go so as far as being able to detect infrared, ultraviolet, and polarized light.
On the flip side of this coin, plenty of animals see even fewer colors than we do. Most of these involve domesticated species such as cats and dogs that, during their evolution, have never developed the additional receptors that would allow them to distinguish various shades of reds and greens.
It’s clear to see that how we experience colors is a direct result of our past and has a significant influence on how we interact with our surroundings.
Why We Care So Much About Color
It may be your instinct to look at something like a stop sign and think, “that’s a red sign, so what?” But what you don’t realize is that there is so much more going on that your brain is subliminally processing. It’s much more than just a red sign because we were trained to interpret colors on a much deeper level from the very moment of our birth.
Think about the first few days after you’re born. Your initial experiences are the shocking white light your eyes are not yet accustomed to, the color and scent of your mother’s skin, the white milk and its distinctive taste, the blue of the sky or maybe the ocean, and the green of the grass and plants surrounding you. All of these objects, and many others, have colors associated with them, along with multiple other senses that you are subconsciously taking in and storing in your brain.
As you get older, you’re suddenly taught to analyze colors in a whole new light as you learn the names of these colors and start pairing objects of the same color into categories or groupings. So by the time you start filling in coloring books, your conscious mind has already disassociated colors from objects and experiences, simply breaking them down into different types of “skins” for other objects.
Fun Fact: The etymology of the word “color” comes from the Latin word “color”, which itself is derived from the Old Latin word “colos”. This translates to “a covering” and belongs to the same family as the word “celare” which means “to conceal”. From this, we can safely compare color to being more of a “skin” for an object. The same is true for the word “khroma”, greek for color, which derives from “khros”, which means skin as well. It is only in the 17th century, with Newton, that color becomes associated with light and developed the definition that we use today.
Colors are not only a physical reality as they affect us at a deep subconscious level. This perception depends on our evolution as humans and the life experiences of each of us. For example, when you picture green, you may imagine earthiness or nature, maybe conjuring images of moss, grass, or leaves. If green had a cooler tone that resembled some shade of blue, then your mind would suddenly align it more with the sky or water, which are far colder than leaves or moss. These deeper meanings make color such a pivotal force in how we experience the world around us and give it such an essential role in our lives.
If you’d like to learn even more about how colors influence how humans interact with everything from food to corporate brands, then make sure to check out part two of this series called Exploring the Hidden Meanings of Color.
