They are typically energizing and can add life to a design. Warm colors tend to be invigorating and lively. It’s vital that designers pay attention to how the colors in their palettes work in harmony with each other, and how each color influences the others around it. In many western cultures, white is largely associated with purity and peace, and yet in some Asian countries, white is associated with death and mourning. There are seemingly endless factors that can influence how a color is perceived and how it affects human behavior and thought.Ĭultural differences can also have a profound effect on color meanings. This is one reason why color psychology and color theory is so complex. For example, red (a warm color), can evoke feelings of rage or danger (consider Holly Golightly’s monologue about the “mean reds” in Breakfast at Tiffany’s), while green (a cool color) can evoke feelings of growth and new beginnings. Still, those associations aren’t hard and fast rules. Most often, warm colors (yellow, red, and orange) are considered to be positive colors, while cool colors (blue, green, and purple) are considered to be negative. There’s a common idea out there that some colors are inherently positive or negative. This guide to color and emotions can help designers create and apply an effective palette. And in a worst case scenario, colors can turn people off even when everything else about a design is optimized. That results in a lot of wasted effort and color palettes that aren’t necessarily influencing a desirable response to a product. Color has the single greatest effect on how people perceive designs, yet too many designers do not spend the necessary time and effort to properly create color palettes for their projects.

UX designers can utilize color to great effect in order to influence people’s emotions as well as their actual behavior. (He referenced the color green in relation to jealousy at least three times in his works.) People associate red with anger (or lust), blue with depression, and since at least Shakespeare’s day, green with jealousy. Popular idioms show that people have long associated colors with the emotions they evoke.

Color schemes emotional color wheel