Using Color to Stimulate – or Suppress – Mood
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
By Bill Primavera
Maybe I was 14 or 15 when my mother allowed me to select the color that “my” room (as distinguished from the one I had always shared with my older brother until he went off to be a paratrooper) was to be painted.
I didn’t have to think for a minute about the color I wanted to surround myself with – red. Actually, a blood red, and not the dull color of dried blood, but the vibrant hue of fresh blood. I intuitively knew how to surround myself with warmth and vibrancy.
But, as I clearly recall, when it came time to sell that home, prospective buyers would look into that room and exclaim “Wow!” According to my mother, it may actually have ruined a sale or two, but as a realtor today, I always advise buyers that paint is the quickest and easiest fix to upgrading a property, both outdoors and indoors. A fresh coat of paint can forgive a multitude of sins, both physically and psychologically.
When my wife Margaret and I bought our first home in Brooklyn Heights, we immediately set out to cover the walls of most rooms with busy wallpaper. (We were crazy for wallpaper in those days.) When the former owner, a friend, visited us after our wallpaper frenzy, he exclaimed, “On no! And it took me weeks to decide on the perfect color green paint for this room!”
Today we live in a home where, bought new, the slightly off-white color of the walls appealed to us, and we stuck with it for a half-dozen years. We feel that a neutral background for our collection of antique oil paintings is a good thing to stick with. And, when I get an urge to change something in our maintenance-free surroundings, maybe by changing the color of a room, my wife exclaims, “No!”
“But I’m feeling that a nice shade of salmon would be great for the bedroom,” I plead.
But the manager of all the nice things that made a home a home has put her foot down. So I live in a tranquil setting of off-white, certainly nothing too exciting.
In researching the psychology of color online, I find that my early fondness for red may be explained psychologically as “the warmest and most contradictory of the colors. In fact, this fiery hue has more opposing emotional associations than any other color: Red is linked to passion and love as well as power and anger.” I guess that explanation shows where my head was when I was a teenager.
Through my research, I can offer a basic primer on which colors besides red stimulate which moods or feelings. Green is calming; blue, especially in the workplace, is stimulating; purple is spiritual; orange is attention-grabbing (which is why it is frequently used in advertising); and yellow is bright (the color of the sun, Van Gogh reminds us).
When I am asked what my favorite color is, I never have to think twice: it’s pink. Pink for a man? Yes, but actually it’s more a mauve, where the pink contains a lot of gray. When we owned an historic home in Brooklyn Heights, we changed its exterior color from pale gray to mauve, and that created quite a stir in the neighborhood.
When I established the colors for my public relations firm, I chose mauve for a lot of our materials (such as the press kit folders) and it frequently produced comment. But that’s who I am, color psychology-wise.
Bill Primavera is a realtor associated with William Raveis Real Estate and founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc. (www.PrimaveraPR.com). To engage the services of The Home Guru to market your home for sale, call 914-522-2076.
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