Colours do affect our life, actions and reactions. They can create fatigue, stress, damage to eyes, errors, loss of orientation. Some colours are very comforting, others are irritating. Some colours appeal to men, others appeal to women. In fact, there is a significant difference in men and women's reaction to colour. For instance, men get bored in grey environment very quickly, while women stay indifferent to this colour. Men prefer bright colours and women prefer soft ones, though there is no significant difference in preferences of light versus dark colour for men and women.
Green is considered to be the most comforting and restful colour for eyes. Suicides dropped 34% when London Blackfriar Bridge was painted green. Green is a sacred colour for the Egyptians symbolising hope and joy of Spring. In Celtic myths the Green man was the God of fertility, that’s why for some nations the bride's gown colour was green. If you look at the Renaissance masterpiece the picture by Jan Van Eyck «Giovanni Arnolfini and His Bride», you see that she wears the green gown. Though for most people today the bride's colour is white, for some it is inappropriate.
In China, white is the colour of mourning and if a bride wears it, parents would never allow her to get married. In India, for example, the bride colour is white with the touch of other colours.
Choosing the right colour is essential to advertising, producing and selling products, creating positive company image. Believe it or not, but some colours, blue in particular, are appetite suppressers. A few years ago makers of «M&Ms» American candy, assortment of different coloured chocolates, added blue. So, if you want to lose your weight just put your food on blue plates, or uses blue light in your dining room and refrigerator. The thing is that there is no blue food in nature, and we have no automatic appetite reaction to it. Moreover, million years ago, blue, purple and black were «warning signs» of deadly food for our ancestors.
Shopping is not as simple as you may think! There are all sorts of psychological and eye-deceiving tricks at play each time we reach out for that particular brand of product on the shelf. Colouring, for example, varies according to what the manufacturers are trying to sell. Most cosmetics are packaged in delicate pastel colours such as pink. Health foods come in greens, yellows or browns because we think of these as healthy colours. Ice cream packets are often blue because we identify that as a cool colour; and luxury goods, like expensive chocolates, are invariably gold or silver.