What Your Color Choices Tell Others

Colors are more than a combination of red and blue or yellow and black. They are non-verbal communication. Colors have symbolism and color meanings that go beyond ink.

Sometimes colors create a physical reaction and at other times it is a cultural reaction Colors follow trends as well. For example, avocado, a shade of green, is synonymous with the 60’s and 70’s in the minds of some consumers.

Meanings For The More Popular Color Picks

Blue
Calm and Cool: Blue is calming. It can be strong and steadfast or light and friendly. Almost everyone likes some shade of the color blue.

Culture of Blue: In many diverse cultures blue is significant in religious beliefs, brings peace, or is believed to keep the bad spirits away. Blue conveys importance and confidence without being somber or sinister, hence the blue power suit of the corporate world and the blue uniforms of police officers. Long considered a corporate color, blue, especially darker blue, is associated with intelligence, stability, unity, and conservatism. Dark blue is sometimes seen as staid or stodgy — old-fashioned.

Gold
Riches and Excess: A cousin to yellow (and orange and brown) is gold. While green may be the color of money (U.S. money, that is) gold is the color of riches and extravagance.

Culture of Gold: Because gold is a precious metal, the color gold is associated with wealth and prosperity. While all that glitters is not gold the color gold still suggests grandeur, and perhaps on the downside, the excesses of the rich.

Red
Love and War: Red is hot. It's a strong color that conjures up a range of seemingly conflicting emotions from passionate love to violence and warfare. Red is Cupid and the Devil.

Nature of Red: A stimulant, red is the hottest of the warm colors. Studies show that red can have a physical effect, increasing the rate of respiration and raising blood pressure.

Culture of Red: Red is power, hence the red power tie for business people and the red carpet for celebrities and VIPs (very important people).

Using Red: Use the color red to grab attention and to get people to take action. Use red when you don't want to sink into the background. Use red to suggest speed combined with confidence and perhaps even a dash of danger. A little bit of red goes a long way.

Orange
Energetic: Orange is vibrant. It's a combination of red and yellow so it shares some common attributes with those colors. It denotes energy, warmth, and the sun. But orange has a bit less intensity or aggression than red.

Nature of Orange: Orange is a stimulant — it triggers the emotions and even the appetite.

Culture of Orange: Orange brings up images of autumn leaves, pumpkins, and (in combination with Black) Halloween. It represents the changing seasons so in that sense it is a color on the edge, the color of change between the heat of summer and the cool of winter.

Because orange is also a citrus color, it can conjure up thoughts of good health. In keeping with its transitional appearance in nature, you might use shades of orange to indicate transition or a bridge between two opposing factors. Orange is mentally stimulating as well as sociable. Use it to get people thinking or to get them talking.

Purple
Royalty and Spirituality: Purple is royalty. A mysterious color, purple is associated with both nobility and spirituality. The opposites of hot red and cool blue combine to create this intriguing color.

Nature of Purple: Purple has a special, almost sacred place in nature: lavender, orchid, lilac, and violet flowers are often delicate and considered precious. Because purple is derived from the mixing of a strong warm and strong cool color it has both warm and cool properties. A purple room can boost a child's imagination or an artist's creativity. Too much purple, like blue, could result in moodiness.

Black
Ultimate Dark: Considered the negation of color, black is conservative, goes well with almost any color except the very dark. It also has conflicting connotations. It can be serious and conventional. The color black can also be mysterious, sexy, and sophisticated.

Nature of Black: Black is the absence of color. In clothing, black is visually slimming. Black, like other dark colors, can make a room appear to shrink in size and even a well-lit room looks dark with a lot of black. Black can make other colors appear brighter.

Culture of Black: In most Western countries black is the color of mourning. Among young people, black is often seen as a color of rebellion. Black is both positive and negative. In early Westerns the good guy wore white while the bad guy wore black. But later on good guys wore black to lend an air of mystery to themselves.

Neutral Colors
The Colors of Unity: The neutral colors of black, white, silver, gray, and brown make good backgrounds, serve to unify diverse color palettes, and also often stand alone as the only or primary focus of a design.

Neutral colors help to put the focus on other colors or serve to tone down colors that might otherwise be overpowering on their own. To some extent blacks, browns, tans, golds, and beige colors are considered warm. While white, ivory, silver, and gray are somewhat cooler colors. Yet these warm and cool attributes are flexible and subtler than that of reds or blues.

Source: http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/color/a/symbolism.htm