Colour Psychology
We previously did a post on the Importance of Colours and talked about how it can affect moods and provoke feelings. But let’s go a little deeper today into Colour Psychology and discover exactly how colours can influence us, especially in a learning environment.
What is Colour Psychology?
Despite the general lack of research in this area, the concept of color psychology has become a hot topic in marketing, art, design, and other areas. Much of the evidence in this emerging area is anecdotal at best, but researchers and experts have made a few important discoveries and observations about the psychology of color and the effect it has on moods, feelings, and behaviors.
“color’s influence on psychological functioning”
Although our perception of colours can be subjective, some can have universal meaning. For example,
Black can usually mean indication of power, death or mystery, strength and seriousness.
White is automatically related to purity, innocence and peacefulness.
Red, anger and power or love.
Blue, calmness and sadness.
Yellow, energy and attention.
So, educators should make an effort to colour their rooms strategically to improve creativity, attention and probably learning attitude. Green and Blue are largely touted as being conducive to learning, as they usually elicit calmness, relaxation and comfort. A big plus is that Blue is essentially soothing and aid concentration.
Hints of warmer colours like reds, yellows and oranges can be stimulating and bring excitement along with an increase of brain activity. This suggestion might be better for an art studio or where students are encouraged to explore creative work.
It can take a lot of strategic planning and time to optimize a learning environment and ensure that it facilitates learning, but surely we would find the effort worth it.