metro news… what’s your favourite colour

Karen Haller 01
Karen Haller

Metro Infographic - Karen Haller Colour Facts blog post

Being interviewed by the Metro’s reporter Ross McGuinness for yesterday’s Metro In Focus feature was great fun. I knew by the diverse colour questions the article was going to be full of fun and interesting colour facts.

I just love the infographic Ross created from all the information he gathered. I love learning new colour facts too and how wonderful in Thailand each day of the week has its own colour!

Metro In Focus Infographic - Karen Haller Colour Facts.

Here are some interesting colour fact I shared with Ross.

blue, the nation’s favourite colour
Blue may occasionally be associated with coldness, but it is also the colour of authority and logic and it is the nation’s favourite colour.

Many women were heavily influenced in their colour choices by their mothers and then went on to influence their own partner’s colour scheme. [source 3M Post-it & Karen Haller research]

wearing grey
Wearing grey at work – you may not really want people to know who you are. You get your job done, you go and then you show people who you are out of work. It’s a colour for when you don’t want to be seen.

wearing black
It’s the colour of emotional safety. Wearing black creates an emotional barrier – it’s a way of hiding the personality and protecting oneself.

When teenagers may want to wear black and they may want to have a black bedroom, they’re protecting themselves, they’re hibernating, they’re creating a cocoon, they’re trying to find who they are.

colour psychology
Our colour choices can speak volumes about us and are often performed instinctively. The colours we wear and the colours around us impact our mood on an unconscious level.

colour intuition
We regularly conform to fit in when it comes to colours, when we should follow our age-old colour instincts.

Before we had a spoken language, our very first primal language was colour. And it’s the way that nature still operates, nature works through a colour language.

That’s why red can mean warmth because of the warmth from a fire, but it can also mean danger. Every colour has a set of positive and negative qualities.

my favourite colour
That is orange – the orange you see in the marigold flower. It just makes me smile, it lifts my mood, it’s the colour of playfulness. It reminds me not to get too serious.

colour in business interiors
You go into a bar, you go into a store or you go into a hospital… it doesn’t matter what it is, what we’re always doing with colour is we are creating a mood and creating a feeling.

The spaces we enter have been deliberately coloured by a designer to manipulate our mood, influencing our behaviour.

colour marketing manipulation
But sometimes we rebel…

I believe there has been something of a backlash from parents with newborn babies and infants who are forced by marketers into buying blue products for boys or pink products for girls.

They feel their daughters are being driven to behave a certain way and down a certain path. It’s not the pink that’s wrong – it’s the way it’s being used. And it’s being used really to influence and to manipulate in a way.

brand colour message
Brands have to choose their colours carefully to put out the right message. Our brain takes in colour before we take in anything else.

colour harmony
There’s no such thing as a right or wrong colour. Like there’s no such thing as a wrong musical note. It’s how the notes are played. We can hear straight away when there’s a note that’s off.

Same thing with colours – when colours don’t harmonise together they create a jarring effect.

love to know your favourite colour
Metro have created a hashtag to find out what your favorite colour is. So do please tweet @MetroUK @KarenHaller using #MetroColour hashtag and let us know your favourite colour and why

Source: Metro In Focus: What is your favourite colour and why?

Images: Metro In Focus: What is your favourite colour and why?

To read the feature article in full Metro In Focus: What is your favourite colour and why?

 

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