Color Me Crazy

Posted: January 30, 2018  

What does color say about you? Have you seen those tests on Facebook that claim to tell you that how you see color determines your personality? Is it gray, blue or green? Play the game here. Maybe you are more a “my favorite color” says I am… person. I just read an article in Psychology Today, by Bernardo Tirado, PMP. He discusses how he used an activity where the members of a group chose a colored pencil from a group of eight. He used this exercise as the first data point in understanding the members of the group from the color they chose.

Maybe I am dating myself, do you remember when we were grouped by winter, spring, summer or fall and told we should only wear the colors that fell into our season? We also hear that our closets are a window into our home color palette. If you wear a lot of black and white, the proverbial “they” say that you will lean toward those colors in your home. I have to say, sometimes I think this is true. My sister wears a lot of blue – blue jeans, jackets, shirts, everything and left to her own devices, everything in her home was blue. While, my daughter-in-law is notoriously clothed in black, she leans toward navy blue for her home décor. I wear a lot of black, and I do not use much black at all. Maybe Whitney and I just override our natural inclination to our fashion color of choice. How about you? Look in your closet? What do you see? And, is it in your living room or office too?    

Do interior designers set color trends or do they inadvertently follow the previous few years fashion trends? I have read a number of articles that say how we decorate our homes is always a few years behind what the fashion designers had on the runway. They show earth tones and 5 years later we are sitting on our sofa surrounded by earth tones. They say bright and color is in, and once again, 5 years later, we will see lots of loud florals and bright colors working their way into homes.

If this is true, how did the white everything farmhouse style takeover? Was it all Joanna Gaines and Fixer Upper? Or, is there more to the colors we choose to surround ourselves with? Chefs say food looks more appetizing on or in white. Is that driving the white kitchen craze? Realtors say white kitchens stand the test of time and seem fresh and clean. Or, maybe you just looked in your closet, saw white and just went for it.

How do you feel about color? Does the color of a room change your mood? Does the color someone is wearing change your perception of them? Does the color you wear give you energy or make you drag through the day?

It’s definitely worth a thought.