Color

Yvette Oruko
3 min readMay 7, 2019

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Color is the power which directly influences the soul Said Wassily Kandisky. It is evident that life is made of colors because without colors, life would be so boring. Colors make the wildlife more captivating, vegetation more attractive and brighten our lives regardless of the current situation.

Color is divided into 3 main groups ie. primary, secondary and tertiary colors. Primary colors are the 3 main colors that when mixed, other colors are formed. These colors include red, blue and yellow. Secondary colors are colors formed as a result of mixing primary colors ie. purple, green and orange. Tertiary/intermediate colors, on the other hand, are colors that are formed by mixing and equal amounts of primary and secondary colors eg yellow-orange & red-purple. The three color groups combine to form a Color Wheel.

33The image above shows color wheels

Different colors and their meaning

Different colors in the color wheel represent different sets of emotions. For example here in Kenya if you come across a gate written in red what comes to your head is a stern warning and immediately threatening conclusions such as ‘Mbwa Kali’ (Furious Dog) or ‘Umeme’ (Dangerous electricity zone) welcomes themselves in your head. Red also symbolizes hot, when used on dishes. The red color symbolizes tough financial times. Hence, institutions such as banks avoid the color like a plague in their brands. But on the reverse, it creates a sign of urgency hence heavily used when doing clearance sales.

Red showing clearance sale

White symbolizes purity, cleanliness, virginity, faith and perfection. As opposed to black which is so dark, white always show positivity. The color white is also used to symbolize peace or surrender. During times of war, an army is officially defeated if they throw in the white flag.

Green is related to the environment, freshness, productivity and fertility. The color might affect people both physically and mentally in different ways. In interior design, when green paint is used in a room well, it helps diminish depression, anxiety and nervousness. On the other hand, when green is used too much in an interior space it can cause people to become lazy, unproductive, slow, placid, moody and also depressed.

Use of green in an office

Toy companies may prefer colorful toys because kids love playful colors and here is where they find comfort in. Companies that deal with flights also avoid using yellow in the interior since color yellow is associated with nausea.

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