Recently I helped a client with paint colors for her home, and much to her surprise she became enamored with the blue I had chosen for her dining room. In the middle of painting her house she had a question and reached out to me. She said she loved all the colors but that her very favorite was that blue. Again, she said how surprised she was to have fallen in love with it, even more so when she started painting. She said that her mother had recently passed away and had always loved blue. She on the other hand had always hated it. Then, as if she was speaking to herself, she said, “Maybe I am craving blue because I miss her?”
It is through our senses that we understand and navigate the world. Without stimuli, our brains would have nothing to do. Color is a very powerful stimulus that is fundamental to our past, present, and future.
Color is beneficial to memory
Physically, color causes awareness, which leads to retention, which helps us create and access memories. Color is essential in helping us remember and catalogue memories that eventually become our past. Color honors the past.
Color is beneficial to well-being
Emotionally, color causes us to react with feelings, which we then label as emotions. Emotions allow us to experience life in the present moment. In the book Neurosculpting: A Step-by-Step Program to Change Your Brain and Transform Your Life, author Lisa Wimberger explains how awe, a feeling of wonder, stops time and pulls us into the present. She uses a lot of color to teach meditation exercises to work with Neuroplasticity, or how the brain’s neural synapses or pathways are altered as a direct result of environmental, behavioral, and neural changes. Our reactions to color can affect our state of mind in the present, and therefore our well-being. Color honors the present.
Color is beneficial to optimism
Finally, psychologically, color is a powerful stimulus that causes desire. We look forward to color; in food, nature, art, clothing, seasons, you name it. Looking forward to color is enjoyable. Therefore, color is beneficial to our optimism and our future. Color honors the future.
I watched my client respond to past feelings about blue, relabel them as positive and fall in awe with her life today. I saw her past, present, and future be transformed by a shade of blue.
Color Memory, Well-Being, and Optimism are the pillars of my Color With Benefits™ protocol, a philosophical process that I put together to create both residential and commercial environments that use color with emotional benefits in mind. I use color to strategically create spaces to be memorable, hopeful, and to feel good—and they continue to be powerful stimuli long after I’m done.
