Colors: Their Connotations and Perceived Meanings

Throughout the ages, colors have been used to evoke unavoidable emotions, and an exam of the history of color offers arresting insights into the human condition, as well as showing how separate cultures have advanced separate attitudes about color. Here are a few examples of what various colors have come to rehearse over the years:

Colors: Their Connotations and Perceived Meanings

Colors: Their Connotations and Perceived Meanings

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Colors: Their Connotations and Perceived Meanings

Colors: Their Connotations and Perceived Meanings

Red

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 beloved for wedding dresses in America, but the Chinese prefer to dress their brides in red.

Orange

Orange is determined a warm color, perhaps 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 reduce 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 other warm and comforting color, stimulating the appetite and beyond doubt 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 determined a cheerful color. Yellow is also the first color most citizen see in early spring, when the daffodils begin to bloom. However, there seems to be an East/West cultural contrast when it comes to yellow. The Chinese revere yellow enough to have determined it the imperial color since the 10th century, yet several Western studies have shown that yellow is many people's least favorite color.

Green

Green is other 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 determined to rehearse fertility, and during the 15th century, green was the most favorite selection 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 difficulty 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 determined to rehearse elegance and sophistication.

There are stories and connotations for every color, and separate cultures assign separate meanings to colors. For instance, American brides commonly 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 determined determined when decorating a home.

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

Colors: Their Connotations and Perceived Meanings

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