09/01/2016
Color and Emotion: What Does Each Hue Mean?
Color can evoke a wide-range of responses and
it is important to understand the effect a hue
can have on your message when planning a
design project.
You have probably heard people refer to warm
and cool colors when making choices about how
to paint a room or what shade of makeup a
woman selects. But did you know that color can
mean so much more than that?
The colors you use on your website can elicit
different emotional reactions from people. Years
of research has proven that each color has
associations with certain feelings and can create
a mood. Understanding color choices and implied
perceptions can help you create a more effective
design without unintended color miscues.
Warm and cool colors
Warm and cool hues refer to the feeling a color
scheme implies. Warm colors include reds,
yellows and oranges and are often used to paint
the walls of living spaces in homes and used as
accents to pop out neutral shades. Cool colors,
such as blues, greens and purples, are popular
choices for bedrooms and more relaxed home
spaces because of their versatility. In the same
way these colors are used to create certain
feelings in a room, they can be used to elicit
emotion for your website.
Warm colors are inviting, happy and cozy. These
colors can make spaces appear smaller because
warm tones seem to advance, creating a cozy
feel. Warm colors can create an active response
in the brain and bring feelings of excitement,
passion and sometimes aggression. In extremely
large spaces, an abundance of warm color can
get overwhelming and is best matched with
neutral tones.
Cool color choices, considered calming and
soothing, are somewhat recessive and can make
spaces feel a little more open than they are.
Some argue that a cool color scheme can make
a physical space actually feel cooler than it is
and should be matched with open spaces (such
as white space or neutrals on your website).
Cool hues bring about a more passive reaction in
the brain
