by Rosemary Sadez Friedmann
Scripps Howard News Service
Color is power. Color communicates. Color attracts. Color has force, weight, action and temperature. Now that's a lot for one element to do.
Regarding the first three elements of color described above, let me share a little poem with you written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning titled "The Lady's Yes":
'Yes,' I answered you last night;
'No.,' this morning, 'sir I say'.
Colors seen by candle-light
Will not look the same by day.
Without light there is no color. With a little light there is perception of color, but a shaded one. True color will not be visible until full light shines on it. Ms. Browning's lady figured that out the morning after. So now that we all know that light is color, let's go on to the next elements of color, force and weight.
How can color have force and weight? I don't know, but I can prove to you that it does. Shine a ray of light on a sensitively balanced scale and watch it tip in the direction of the light.
The action of color is its vibration; it is also its wavelength. Red has the longest wavelength, blue the shortest. Red produces action in your bloodstream, blue calms the action in your veins.
We know that colors are described as warm or cool. Red, orange and yellow are heating rays and they do produce heat while blue, violet and green are cooling rays. OK, another experiment for you to try. Place a thermometer in a colored glass of water. Red rays give off the most heat and blue rays the least amount..
When coloring your interiors, you need to know as much about the properties of color as possible. If your climate is warm most of the year, you will benefit with cool colored interiors and vice versa. If you tried the above experiments you should be convinced of this.
Want to check your color preferences against a worldwide, cross-cultural survey? First write down these colors, yellow, orange, violet, blue, red, green. Now re-write them in order of your preference. Don't read on until you have your colors categorized.
OK, here we go. A scientist by the name of T. R. Garth surveyed a number of individuals of varying cultural backgrounds, asking them what colors they liked. In order of best liked first, the American Indians preferred red, blue, violet, green, orange then yellow. The Filipinos line up was red, green, blue, violet, orange, yellow. African-Americans preferred blue, red, green, violet, orange, yellow. Caucasians had the same order of preference as African Americans.
Another research survey that involved 21,000 people found blue was the top choice, followed by red, green, violet, orange and yellow.
I don't know where this puts me as yellow is my favorite color. According to all of the above surveys, yellow is least or next to least color of choice.
(Rosemary Sadez Friedmann, a member of the American Society of Interior Designers, is president of Rosemary Sadez Friedmann, Inc. in Naples, Fla.)
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