Set the Mood With Color

When choosing colors for your home, you should give it some serious thought. Don't select colors that are in vogue if they aren't personally appealing. The colors that surround you affect your life more than you might think.

Color has often been connected with the art of healing. Cures have been created through the use of different-colored gems, body decoration, wraps of colored cloths on injured areas and medicines made of dyes from animals and plants. The Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras reportedly cured disease through music, poetry and colored stones.

Today, some hospitals employ color therapy to aid healing. Observations made in clinical studies show that children will seek out a playroom of the color that corresponds with their ailment, as each part of the body responds to color in a different way. Those with mending muscles gravitate toward red spaces, for example, while those with throat problems seek out green.

To use color to the best effect in your home, consider these tips:

• Red is said to affect motor skills. Think about the hustle and bustle that occurs amid all the red decorations of the holiday season. Given that, you probably don't want to have an abundance of red in the bedroom. By the same theory, bright red in a library would make it difficult to sit still and concentrate.
  
  
• Orange is related to the circulatory and nervous systems. Fast food chains want you to be in and out quickly, hence many of them use lots of orange in their design schemes. Discount stores want you to buy what you need as well as a few impulse items, and orange can help stimulate you into that state of buying frenzy. Orange in a kitchen might be OK, but not so fine in a dining room, where you probably want to sit and enjoy a leisurely, peaceful dinner.
  
  
• Yellow corresponds to the chest, heart and lungs, affecting respiration and cardiopulmonary activities. It's also said to be a color admired by intellectuals. This would be a good color for a workout room, particularly if aerobics will be involved.
  
  
• Green relates to the throat and vocal cords. Theaters always have a "green room" where performers await their cues before going on stage. There's a serenity to green that has a calming effect, but if it isn't your favorite color, you can still incorporate the calm, serene feel with green plants and trees in the home.
  
  
• As the human eye matures, there's a preference — almost a need — for blue. That's because of the yellowing that's occurring in the eye's lens. Blue being the complementary of yellow, supplies the needed hue to the yellowing eye. In Western nations, blue is ranked as the favorite color in the spectrum.

(Rosemary Sadez Friedmann is author of Mystery of Color.)