Emily Sohn

Colour Preferences Determined by Experience

Our experiences with objects determine how we feel about the colours of those objects. There are general trends in colour preferences across cultures, but wide differences among individuals. Understanding why we like the colours we do could help artists, designers and marketing companies.

Yellow or pink flowers? The green or blue sweater? From cars to furniture to iPods, we make decisions about colour all the time. Now, scientists are starting to figure out why we like the hues we do.

It is our experiences that determine which colours we prefer, suggests a new study, which was the first to experimentally test the long-suspected idea that people like the colours of the things they like.

The findings may help explain why blue is pleasing to people everywhere, why Japanese women tend to like light colours, and why dark yellow is generally unappealing, among other trends.

"I might like purple more than you because my sister's bedroom was purple and I had positive experiences there," said Karen Schloss, a graduate student in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. "Your own personal preference is determined by all the entities you've encountered of that colour and how much you liked them."

In their attempts to understand why people like certain colours, scientists have focused on evolution. The main theory is that we like colours that are tied to things that are healthy and promote survival.

A blue sky, for example, indicates calm weather, which might explain why blue tends to be a favoured colour across cultures. Dark yellows and oranges, on the other hand, invoke urine, feces, vomit and rotting food. As expected, there is usually a dip in preference for these hues in studies around the world.

Scientists have also predicted, with mixed results, a preference for red among women, who would've needed to spot red berries against green foliage in our ancestral hunter-gatherer societies.

Despite those general trends, there are wide-ranging differences among individuals about which colours they like. Schloss and colleague Stephen Palmer wanted to know why.

As part of a series of experiments, the researchers showed slide shows of coloured objects to a group of participants. The images were biased, so that some people might see nice red things, like yummy strawberries, but unpleasant green images like slime. Others saw unpleasant red things like blood but nice green objects, like trees. Afterwards, the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, people preferred whichever colour had been linked to the positive images they saw, whether red or green.

In another preliminary study, the researchers found that Berkeley students who ranked highest in school spirit had the strongest preferences for blue and gold, their school's colours, and the most distaste for red and white, the colours of their rival Stanford.

Spirited Stanford students showed the opposite pattern, suggesting that social affiliations can influence which colours we like at different times in our lives.

"Their study is a really neat experiment to prove something that we have suspected for a long time," said Yazhu Ling, vision scientists at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. She and colleagues established a theory that our systems for ranking colours are hardwired, even if our actual colour preferences are malleable.

"You see loads of articles online about what colour you like and what that says about what kind of person you are," she added. "There is not actually scientific support for that. But it shows that people are generally interested in the subtle differences between people and what has driven that. Colour provides a tool to understand why we like some things more than others.”

Think about the personality of the person instead of the emotion

Men’s favourite

Blue 57%

Green 14%

Black 9%

Red 7%

Orange 5%

Grey 3%

White 2%

Yellow 1%

Women’s favourite

Blue 35%

Purple 23%

Green 14%

Red 9%

Black 6%

Orange 5%

Men prefer bright colours

Women prefer soft colours

^{The secret
to confidence of colour design}

The isolation effect is when people remember things easier if they are standing out from its surroundings, like in a bubble or star with different colour to the rest.

Hues

These are the family of twelve purest and brightest colors.

Three Primary Colors
Three Secondary Colors
Six Tertiary Colors

They form the full spectrum of colours which progress around the Primary Colour Wheel in gradual increments.

With just these twelve colours, you can literally mix an infinite number of colour schemes. Most of the time you will modify these twelve basic hues by mixing in other colours.

But nothing is stopping you from using them full-strength. This colour would be bold, cheerful and exciting. It would be great in a child's playroom. Bright, bold selections can also work to grab attention in advertising and marketing graphics. Creating a painting with these would be a little jarring.

Tints

Every individual colour on the Basic Colour Wheel can be altered in three ways by Tinting, Shading or Toning. And that's before we even think about mixing two colours together.

Let's start with lightening the twelve basic colours to create Tints.

A Tint is sometimes called a Pastel. Basically it's simply any colour with white added.

If you want to get a little more complicated, you can mix any of the twelve pure colours together. Then simply add any amount of white and you have created a pastel or tint of the mixture.

That means you can go from an extremely pale, nearly white to a barely tinted pure hue .Artists often add a tiny touch of white to a pure pigment to give the colour some body. So for example a bright Red can quickly become a bright Pink.

A colour scheme using Tints is usually soft, youthful and soothing, especially the lighter versions. All tints work well in feminine environments. You often see advertising; marketing and websites use pale and hot pastels if they are targeting women as a demographic. In painting you might save your lightest pastels for the focal point or use pastels for the entire painting.

Shades

A Shade is simply any colour with black added.

Just as with making tints, you can mix any of the twelve pure colours together. Then simply add any amount of black and you have created a shade of the mixture.

That means you can go from an extremely dark, nearly black to a barely shaded pure hue.

Most artists use black sparingly because it can quickly destroy your main colour. Some artists prefer not to use it at all. Instead they understand the rules of colour well enough to make their own black mixtures.

Shades are deep, powerful and mysterious. Be careful not to use too much black as it can get a little overpowering. These darks work well in a masculine environment. They are best used as dark accents in art and marketing graphics.

Tones

Almost every colour we see in our day-to-day world has been toned either a little or a lot. This makes for more appealing colour combinations.

A Tone is created by adding both White and Black which is grey. Any colour that is "greyed down" is considered a Tone.

Tones are somehow more pleasing to the eye. They are more complex, subtle and sophisticated.

Artists usually mix a little grey in every paint mixture to adjust the value and intensity of their pigment. Tones are the best choice for most interior decorating because they're more interesting. They work well in any colour Scheme you might plan

Evaluation

What I have learned about colour is that the colour that people choose to be the favourite colour is to do with the experiences that the each person had with that colour with. For example my favourite colour is blue because I like the sky and water so I think things I like with the colour I like the most.

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