Colour has considerable impacts on human emotions. One may delight in the beautiful red and golden-yellow leaves of autumn, and in the magnificent colours of a sunset. One may be charmed by the coloured arch of a rainbow, and by gorgeous colours of flowering plants.

Just look at the tone-changing picture on the right: Does the achromatic tone show as "warm feelings" as does the fully saturated tone? Surely not!

The relationships between colour and emotion have long been of interest to both artists and scientists. Such relationships are called colour emotion. The current page describes what colour emotion really means, as shown in the following:-

 

Definition

Colour-Emotion Test Simulation

References

Definition of Colour Emotion

Colour plays a significant role in global marketing communication, as colour not only helps enhance brand recognition, but it also translates intended visual impressions into design elements of a product, it can create desired atmosphere in a retail outlet and influence consumers' behaviour.

The impact of colour can be attributed to a wide range of colour associations, in which colour is seen as either a symbol or a sign. The former regards colour as representation of physical items or experiences (e.g. red is a symbol of "good luck" in China), while the latter uses colour to provide specific information in visual communication (e.g. red means "stop" as a traffic signal).

In both cases, colour may serve either as an emotion elicitor that creates emotional impact on the viewer (e.g. Chinese people are happy to receive the "red envelopes" on Chinese New Year's Eve), or as an emotion messenger, sending a communicative signal describing affective quality of the colour itself or of the environment/product (e.g. a vivid red is often regarded as a warm, exciting colour).

Colour as an emotion messenger has attracted enormous interest from researchers in different disciplines, who have given various names to work in this area such as "colour meaning", "colour image", "colour emotion" and "expectations". For consistency, and following the tradition of previous work by the authors, the term colour emotion will be used in this paper to indicate the subject area described here.

Colour-Emotion Test Simulation

Click the button below to begin the simulated test:

Findings of colour emotion are summarised in here: single-colour emotion, colour-pair emotion and cross-cultural issues.

Two related subjects, colour preference and colour harmony, are discussed under headings single-colour preference and colour harmony, respectively.

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References

Wright B and Rainwater L. The meanings of color. Journal of General Psychology 1962; 67: 89-99.

Adams FM and Osgood CE. A cross-cultural study of the affective meaning of color. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 1973; 4: 135-156.

Taft C. Color meaning and context: comparisons of semantic ratings of colors on samples and objects. Color Research and Application 1997; 22: 40-50.

Kobayashi S. The aim and method of the Color Image Scale. Color Research and Application 1981; 6: 93-107.

Kuo W. The feasibility of establishing new color image scales using the magnitude estimation method. Color Research and Application 2007; 32: 463-468.

Sato T, Kajiwara K, Hoshino H and Nakamura T. Quantitative Evaluation and categorising of human emotion induced by colour. Advances in Colour Science and Technology 2000; 3: 53-59.

Ou L, Luo MR, Woodcock A and Wright A. A study of colour emotion and colour preference, Part I: Colour emotions for single colours. Color Research and Application 2004; 29: 232-240.

Ou L, Luo MR, Woodcock A and Wright A. A study of colour emotion and colour preference, Part II: Colour emotions for two-colour combinations. Color Research and Application 2004; 29: 292-298.

Ou L, Luo MR, Woodcock A and Wright A. A study of colour emotion and colour preference, Part III: Colour preference modelling. Color Research and Application 2004; 29: 381-389.

Gao X, Xin JH, Sato T, Hansuebsai A, Scalzo M, Kajiwara K, Guan S, Valldeperas J, Lis MJ, Billger M. Analysis of cross-cultural color emotion. Color Research and Application 2007; 32: 223-229.

Stahre B, Hårleman M, Billger M. Colour emotions in larger and smaller scale. In: Proceedings of Interim Meeting of the Association Internationale de la Coleur (AIC) "Color and Paints" 2004; 27-30.

Hårleman M, Werner I, Billger M. Significance of colour on room character: study on dominantly reddish and greenish colours in north- and south-facing rooms. Colour: Design & Creativity 2007; 1 (1): 9, 1-15.

Hutchings JB. The continuity of colour, design, art and science: Part 1, the philosophy of the total appearance concept and image measurement. Color Research and Application 1995;20: 296-306.

Hutchings JB. Expectations and the Food Industry: The Impact of Color and Appearance. New York: Kluwer/Plenum Publishers; 2003.

Wei S, Ou L, Luo MR and Hutchings JB. Quantification of the relations between juice colour and consumer expectations. In: Proceedings of the 11th Congress of the Association Internationale de la Coleur (AIC) 2009.

Lee W, Luo MR and Ou L. Assessing the affective feelings of two- and three-dimensional objects. Color Research and Application 2009; 34: 75-83.



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