How Paint Color Affects You, Part 6: Blue

As we’ve discussed in six previous blogs, color plays a big part in how people will react in certain situations. Warmer colors such as red and yellow can get people to be more impulsive, with both colors leading people to be a bit angrier in some situations. Green and purple, both on the cooler side, tend to calm people down and make them feel more introspective. Purple even makes people feel colder, so it’s not a color you necessarily want in every room of the house.

Today we’re going to stick with the cooler side of things and focus on a color that you might be surprised we haven’t gotten to yet. After all, tell a group of people to name a color and they’ll probably yell out red, green, and…blue. Those other two have been discussed. Let’s take care of blue — not only how it affects your mood, but also some interesting trivia regarding it.

It’s Calming

Much like green, blue is seen as a calming color. That’s not surprising, considering how much of nature is either green or blue: the forest, the sky, and the ocean. ”Blue Skies” are something you wish for someone on their travels, blue waters are calmer than water that has been churned up.

It Is Secure

People tend to feel secure in a blue room, and it often brings about feelings of order. Companies that want to convey a feeling of security, such as insurance companies, will often use blue in their logos. (Don’t’ believe us? Click here.) If you’re in need of commercial painting and want your customers to feel secure, just give us call.

People Are More Productive

Blue has been shown to make people more productive, which is why we’re often hired for our commercial painting services to paint corporate offices blue. The reason probably combines the two reasons listed above: security and calmness. The security allows people to not worry about the things that could go wrong around them, and the calming aspects mean that they can focus on their work.

But It Can Make You Sad

What do you say to someone who’s feeling down? “What’s making you feel so blue?” What type of music was filled with lamentations about life? The Blues. What part of Picasso’s career was filled with his saddest work? His blue period. Just take one look at the character of Sadness from Pixar’s movie Inside Out. Completely blue.

It’s hard to tell why blue became both the color of sadness and the color of serenity. Blue is often the color associated with cold, deadly nights or the water that people drown in. It’s all conjecture at this point, but if you’d like to read more about it check out these theories on Quora.

It’s Popular…

When prompted to say what their favorite color is, many people will say that it’s blue. In fact, it’s the most popular color out there. The reasons probably comes back to it being a calming presence in our crazy world. Men actually name blue as their favorite color more than women.

…But It’s Not A Popular Car Color

We don’t know why, but blue isn’t a popular car color in America. In fact, it’s not a very popular color across the entire world. It’s beaten by white, silver, black, gray, and red. The only colors that are less popular are green and brown (as well as “other” such as pink and orange).

It Wasn’t Always The Color For Boys

When you look at baby shower gifts and onesies, one thing has held true for the past 100 years: blue for boys, pink for girls. But in the early 1900s, it was the opposite. According to an article from 1918, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” In fact, some believed that it shouldn’t be gender specific but instead should be determined by the hair color of the child.

Babies and Blue Eyes

Melanin, the amount of pigment that people from different parts of the world have in their skin that determines skin color, also has a role in affecting eye color. Many caucasian babies are born with very little melanin in their eyes, meaning that they’ll have blue eyes at birth. The eye color can (and will) change in most babies and become solidified at six-to-nine months.

Cultures Didn’t Have A Word For It

Did you know that when a language comes up with a word for a language, the people who see that language are more readily apt to see that color? That’s the case for blue, because according to this article the people of ancient times wouldn’t even identify it as a color. Take the ancient Greeks, for instance; nowhere in their writing does the color blue appear. In The Odyssey, the sea is described as “wine-dark.” Black is mentioned 200 times, white 100, with red even showing up at 15. Yellow and green are there too. So where was blue? It didn’t really exist as a separate color. The same situation plays out in ancient texts from around the world. Blue simply was, without having to be named. It’s hard to describe, so click on that link above and take a look at the article.

Blue is known for representing security and sadness, boys and girls, and can go away completely in the eyes of some infants. It’s certainly one of the most interesting colors out there, and in the business world is certainly a good option to get workers to work faster or to get customers to feel like your company is on solid ground. If you’re ready to make the most of the color blue, DJ’s painting can help you choose the right shade so that you can get blue to do exactly what you need it to do. Contact us for your commercial painting needs today!