How often do you stop and notice the colors that surround you in your daily life?
Often, we go about our daily lives without paying too much attention to color. It is simply there: the sky is blue, the grass is green, the leaves change their color depending on the season, and it all passes us by. We rarely stop to marvel at them, to truly notice them, and often, we don’t realize the psychological and emotional effect color can have on us.
However, studies have shown that colors have a very big psychological and emotional effect on people. There are several reasons why this happens, and one reason why is evolution. For example, red can increase your heart rate, and this ingrained reaction stems because we unconsciously associate red with passion. Additionally, red is a stimulating color – it makes you think of fire trucks, danger, even fire.
On the other hand, looking at blue has been proven to be calming. In fact, many studies show that blue is the perfect color for an office, because it stimulates productivity while keeping you in a calm mood. It is widely believed that this occurs due to association – when you’re outside on a good day, the sky is blue. Additionally, the sea and the ocean are also blue. In turn, we associate blue with the motion of the waves, increasing the calming effect of the color blue.
Of course, color psychology also indicates that previous experience with color can also influence the effect on us. It is how we develop color preferences. For example, blue might have a calming effect, in general, but if you associate it with a bad memory, its effect on you will be completely the opposite. This means that there are no easy answers, however, there are a few generalities that we can properly utilize to make our lives a tad more interesting, with just a few additions of color in our lives.
Color psychology: Warm and Cool Colors
In order to understand the effect colors can have on your mood and emotions, you need to understand the difference between warm and cool colors.
Primary representatives of warm colors are red, orange and yellow. They have a stimulating effect on your mood, and are commonly referred to as sunny colors. Warm colors can increase your heart rate, thus making you feel warm, and they also have a stimulating effect on your mood, especially red and yellow.
Cool colors are represented by blue, green and purple. They have the opposite effect – they can calm you down, and green is also considered to be the most pleasant color for the eyes. Their effect doesn’t stop on the psychological level; in fact, these colors have been associated with physical relaxation as well.
How Can Color Make Your Life More Interesting?
One of the easiest ways to include color in your life is to add colors to your home. Also, adding colorful garments in your wardrobe can also make your days more interesting. And last, but not least, there is the colors presented to you on your computer or mobile screen. Choosing to add colors to your website or blog can make your time spent before the screen more interesting, it can have a relaxing effect, and the colors can attract more traffic and more readers to your website or blog.
Adding colors to your home and wardrobe
Colors in your home are very important. There are numerous ways in which you can experiment. You can use dry erase paint to turn your wall into a whiteboard where you can express your creativity with colors, and have the benefit of starting all over again the next day.
Colors have three different effects on people: active and stimulating, passive and calming, and neutral. When it comes to adding colors in your home, light colors can make any small room seem bigger, while richer, darker colors can make big rooms feel cozy and warm despite the big size.
Adding colors to your wardrobe, experimenting with different colors can make your life incredibly more fun. For example, using a yellow umbrella on a rainy day will definitely make your day feel sunnier, despite the rain. On the other side of the spectrum, people often don bright, light clothing in summer, especially blues and whites, due to their cooling effect. While black can be a little depressing to wear, it can also make a person feel slimmer and give them a confidence boost. On the other hand, red is often worn when a person wants to make a bold statement, while people that wear blue are often thought to inspire confidence in others.
Use colors to enhance your website or blog
These days, we spend more time in front of a computer screen instead of in the outdoors. This means that the colors of your website, your blog or desktop are very important to your productivity. For example, green is considered to have a great calming effect, and to allow the eyes to rest, which makes it a good color for your desktop. Orange attracts attention, without being as hard on the eyes as red or yellow, while blue inspires confidence and productivity. This is why it is important to choose a theme for your website that will allow you to use colors and interchange them as you need. One of the most adaptable themes out there is the Spine Theme Demo.
The Spine theme is a WordPress theme that offers plenty of ways to experiment and create a website that is pleasing to eye and attracts (and keeps) the attention of its visitors. You can use custom background, be it color or an image, and has plenty of other beautiful features. You can use a featured image for a post, and create custom menus, all of which can be in different colors or images to make the website an attractive whole. Another bonus is that it can be augmented to target specific audiences, and it is very adjustable to your needs and the needs of your business, no matter whether you need a layout without or with sidebars. It is also very easy to use, so beginners in this field will not have any problems getting used to working with it, and it is also mobile ready, which is a very big plus these days as most people prefer to use their phones to browse the internet. The Spine theme is also translate-ready, which means that you can attract international audiences without a problem.
Using the Spine theme gives you the opportunity to create any kind of website you want – from professional business website, to a fun and quirky blog, and it’s features will make your website interesting, and yet remain simple and uncluttered, which is a very big advantage, for viewers tend to stray from websites that are cluttered and take time to respond. The Spine, however, has a very fast response, and you will not lose the attention of your audience due to slowness, or boring layouts. While other themes might have a limited amount of colors, with Spine you can experiment with both images and colors and use bright, happy colors to let the people who have come to your blog that your website is well organized and fun.