Can Colours Change Your Mood?

It is a popular idea that colours can affect your mood, and there is a certain amount of scientific evidence that this may in fact be true. However, our ideas about colour can also be affected by other factors such as the current fashion, and the culture that we live in.

White reflects light, and is popular in fashion and interior design because it is at the same time bright, and yet has a certain neutrality, matching comfortably with the whole range of other colours.

Red is thought to stimulate a faster heartbeat and breathing, and is a colour associated with passion, love and anger.

On the other hand, pinks and blues are thought to have a more calming effect, and sometimes visiting team changing rooms are decorated in these colours, in the hope that the players will become more sluggish!

Green is thought to be very easy on the eye, and have a calming effect on mood.

Yellow is thought to be sunny, cheerful, and a great lifter of mood.

Whether these ideas about colour are simply anecdotal, or really true, perhaps remains to be seen, as in our daily lives we constantly meet a variety of colours.

The colour pink is said to suppress hunger. I don't know what scientists think the reason is, although in my own opinion, I think that evolution has favoured appetite suppression while looking at pink in order to stop people from eating undercooked meat.