Colours of Energy Levels

People are people and brains are brains wherever they are, so it’s no surprise that colours influence us in predictable ways no matter where we find ourselves.
Colour has 3 dimensions, hue, saturation, and brightness.

• Hues are sets of shades, light wavelengths; so greens, blues, and purples are all hues.

• Saturation is how “greyed-out” a colour seems to be, we could think of this as how pure-unpure a colour is. So, a sage green is less saturated than a Kelly green. Sometimes unsaturated colours are called “soft” or “muted” shades.

• Brightness could also be called “lightness,” and it is how much white pigment there seems to be in a colour, with baby blue being lighter than sapphire blue.

Over time, cultures come to link particular hues with particular ideas, as we’ll cover in more detail in the next article. For example, for many cultures, the colour blue is linked to the idea of competence, dependability, and trustworthiness, which explains why the logos for so many banks are blue.

Research has determined that, worldwide, colours that are less saturated and lighter are more relaxing to look at while those that are more saturated and darker make us more energetic. As a result, sage greens and dusty blues can be good choices for places you want to relax, and Kelly greens and sapphire blues can work well when the opposite effect is desired—whatever type of space you’re in.

Using the colours shown at the Wikipedia webpage on shades of green (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_green): seeing the colour laurel green is relatively relaxing (if used in a light tint) while looking at a colour such as forest green is relatively energizing. Another example: Try colours that are saturated but not very bright, such as candy apple red (visible here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy_apple_red), where higher energy is desirable, and ones such as light blue (shown at the shades of blue Wikipedia page ) where calmer is better.

Ideally, light colour coordinates with surface colours, so when warm colours are more plentiful in a space, artificial light in place is warmer also—which works out well because warm colours on surfaces and in lights have the same sorts of psychological effects on us. For more information on the neuroscience of lighting, take a look at this article.