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Psychology / Psychiatry

The Psychology of Colors That Can Transform Your Living Space

By Vince Baby Thevarmadam | Updated: Wednesday, 06 January 2021 15:53 UTC
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The Psychology of Colors That Can Transform Your Living Space
The Psychology of Colors That Can Transform Your Living Space

Color is a strong and nonverbal way of communicating and it is universal. It’s a tool that impacts mood, affects emotions, prompts action, and even influences physiological reactions. In the same way, the color of the walls of your house isn't only about its beauty. These colors speak a lot in silence about one's personality and preferences.

This process termed Room color psychology, plays an important part in your daily life, influencing your moods and energy levels, with just the choice of colors that surrounds your living space. Choosing the right color can help to improve your mood and evoke the right feelings. Let's learn about Room color psychology.

What is Room color psychology?

We can describe Room color psychology as the process of portraying/influencing one's mental state or physiological mindset based on their choice of colors. It’s a thought process involved in selecting colors based on the mood and feeling the room needs to emit. These choices affect one's thoughts, energy levels, and mood daily. You need to make sure you make the right choice. While decorating our living space, we generally do not spend time thinking about the colors or group of colors for our walls. We also tend to forget that each room is different and they depict different emotions. Therefore, it becomes most important to wisely choose the colors.

Also, Colors if rightly used, have the visual ability to modify the shape and size of your rooms. Choosing the right color is not as terrifying as it sounds to be. You only need to update yourself with basic yet simple information about colors and their possible impacts.

Tips to consider when choosing your color

Before you choose a color for your home design, you will first need to decide what type of feel you want to be created or what mood the room should effuse. Once you have decided on the feel and the mood type, you can go ahead and circle out the colors that would match that particular mood.

Secondly, to select a color, you will first need to understand the concept of the color and what effect it can create. You will also need to see whether the selected color will go in sync with the mood of the room.

Each color is different and has its meaning. Though there are various colors and shades available, in broader terms they are normally divided into 3 main categories. Warm colors, cool colors, and Neutral colors.

A) Warm colors: Warm colors are the colors that are present in the red area of the color spectrum. This would include Red, Orange, Yellow, Pink. These colors are often describing the feeling of stimulation of appetite, feeling of warmth and comfort, passion, and anger.

B) Cool colors: Cool colors are the colors that are present in the blue area of the color spectrum. Blue, green, and purple make a part of cool colors. These colors evoke calmness and stability, but can also impart sadness and mediocrity.

C) Neutral colors: Neutral colors are the colors that seem to be without color. Brown, Grey, White black are some colors that form a part of neutral colors.

Another tip to consider when choosing your room color is that lighter colors give you an open and lighter feel, and can reflect light more. Which will make the room look bigger. On the other hand, dark colors give a heavy and locked up feeling while absorbing too much light and thus makes the room look smaller.

Also limiting the number of colors in a room is a smart option. Excessive colors in a room will make it look cluttered and disordered.

What’s the best color for the living room?

The rule of room color psychology for the living room is pretty simple. Pick out colors that would add up to the comfort level, boost conversations, and enhance companionship. You could consider soothing and jovial colors like Green, Blue, or Red for enthusiasm and warmth.

Colors to opt for your Living Room

When it comes to choosing a color for your room, you don’t need to blindly follow a trend. We know these trends keep changing almost every day and it is almost impossible to keep up with the changing trends. There is no reason to worry about it. You can still have a beautiful room by making your own choice. All you need to do is choose colors that you like, blend them into a combination that satisfies your eyes and yet matches up with the mood requirement of your room. You can have a look at the few mentioned below to get started.

Red: You can choose a red color to depict comfort, warmth, excitement, intensity, love, confidence, and gentleness. Red symbolizes good fortune in the Feng shui world and also helps in raising energy levels.

Green: With Green color, you will portray calmness, soothing, nature, cool, growth, prosperity, financial stability, harmony, and stress relief. It will help in creating a positive environment and also energize yourself.

Blue: With the softer shades of blue, you can illustrate relaxation, calmness, stability, serenity, wisdom, loyalty, and focus. It helps in giving your room a premium look.

Yellow: Yellow will help to reflect your personality as a positive person and also set-in good vibes in your living space. Also known as the color of happiness, it will help to convey the feeling of happiness and sunshine.

Brown: The color brown is very grounded as it associates with wood, organic, and nature. It will help to accentuate the elegance and sophistication of your room and also conveys the feeling of warmth.

Grey: The lighter shades of grey give the classic and timeless feel. The darker shade portrays a modern and edgy feel. It’s a completely versatile color and would provide a feeling of warmth and comfort.

White: The white color will definitely help your living room look more open, spacious, bigger, and yet elegant. It helps in inducing a sense of modernity and youthfulness.

Black: Black is not very common, but yet it’s a powerful color. It’s a color of power and mystery and gives depth. It will help to give your space a super-premium look. For accents, it's best to use it in little portions.

Metallics: These colors provide sparkle, sheen, and shine thus giving your room and refreshing stylish look. It also helps in elevating innovation and excitement.

Colors to avoid for your Living Room

Avoid overly bright colors like Orange in your living room as it could promote too much energy and could contradict the soothing mode and cause irritation to the eyes as well the mind.

To conclude, it's not just the colors that you choose, but it’s the reason you choose the colors. Your choice of colors will influence your mood and behavior in your routine life. So, it will be you who decides whether the influence will be a good one or a not so good one. You need to give it a thought and choose the right colors for the right rooms to help in bringing out the best of you.

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