Why do Colours Have a Visual Weight?

Have you ever wondered why some colours look heavier than others?

The strange thing about this question is that we instinctively know which colours appear heavier and which lighter. I can hear you say, “of course we know. Darker colours appear heavier than paler colours”. Yes, true but it’s not quite that simple.

If you paint two identically sized squares with equally saturated hues, one red and the other yellow, the red square will appear heavier.

equally saturated & sized red and yellow squares

The heaviest looking colour is red, closely followed by blue, then green while yellow appears the lightest. But why is it that there is a weight hierarchy for two dimensional colours?

Obviously if you paint a three dimensional brick  yellow and then weigh it, the physical weight of the brick will be the same had you painted it red. But our brains will conclude that the red brick appears heavier than the yellow one.

Psychologist Edward Bullough conducted an experiment in 1907 where he divided a ten foot wall in half horizontally and gave his subjects two buckets of paint. One bucket was filled with red paint, the other with pink. He asked them to paint each half of the wall in a different colour.

Virtually all of his subjects painted red at the bottom with pink above. As we instinctively find red to be visually heavier than its paler cousin pink, it is interesting that most of us prefer to see the heavier colour at the bottom of the wall. If red was used above the line, the wall would look top heavy and make us feel uncomfortable. So we like heavier colours closer to the ground and as red looks heavier that pink, it feels more natural for us to put red at the base of the wall. We seem to be applying gravitational forces to our selection of colour placement even though we know logically that the physical weights are the same!

I expect we are environmentally conditioned to use dark colours closer to the ground with lighter ones above as we are accustomed to solid dark earth under our feet and the pale sky and air above. We are therefore subconsciously emulating an environment that is familiar and comfortable to us.

Pinkerton and Humphrey conducted some experiments on colour weight in 1974. They concluded that perceived weight of colour “is independent of brightness as coloured circles, equal in brightness, differ considerably in apparent weight while achromatic stimuli which differ in brightness do not”. Perhaps its just me but I find it fascinating that our brains order colour like this. Oddly enough scientists still don’t know exactly why we give colour an associated weight. I can’t find any up- to- date research on the subject which I think is rather odd. If anyone knows anything further, please let me know!

Colour weight of course is very important when designing a balanced harmonic interior. In a  public space a designer will normally want to make visitors feel at ease. However some public spaces can be designed to be unbalanced intentionally in order to play with the visitors emotions and create an edgy and unexpected almost awkward experience. This has been achieved at the Imperial War Museum North where the shapes and angles of the building create a tense feeling perfectly suited for a museum about wars.

In domestic interiors it is usual (but not a rule) to create a seamless flow around the house in which case it is best to use colours of equal weight thus avoiding an abrupt change from room to room. If you are using a commercial paint colour chart strip like Dulux for instance, it’s easy to choose several hues which are arranged in the same horizontal position on each colour strip.

However, there are many examples particularly public spaces where architects have placed colour in positions which are unorthodox (and go against normal rules) and in doing so created some breath taking spaces……..more about some of these spaces in my next post.

London: a Riot of Colour

I have to admit to not quite knowing where to start with today’s post. I spent last week in London, a city that never fails to blow my mind, and last week was no exception. It was of course in the throws of London Fashion Week and the The Brit Awards which meant that the shop windows were groomed and styled to perfection.

Strong colour trends were clearly visible throughout London. Blocks of coral crashing into great chunks of Klein blue and 70′s purples anchored by spicy tans and cinnamon hues – tribal colours without the pattern, instead emerging in great blocky geometric shapes.

As if I needed any more colour stimulus, I made a trip to the David Hockney exhibition ‘A Bigger Picture’. Suddenly you find yourself looking at the English countryside though a new set of eyes. To say the exhibition is vibrant, energetic, zesty would somehow be an understatement. This huge exhibition positively bursts off the walls of the Royal Academy with a ramped up sense of optimism and freshness. I would strongly recommend you to watch Andrew Marr’s interview with David Hockney on last nights The Culture Show - so much can be learnt from the mind of this artistic genius. As Hockney says, ‘everything becomes interesting if you really look’, I couldn’t agree more.

looking at patterns and exaggerating colour in Fife

Space is something David Hockney often talks of, particularly where one thing stops and another thing starts. Where two colours meet is something I am intensely interested in as the energy created at the boundaries of adjoining colours is the perfect fusion of art and science. But infinite space is one of  Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s enduring obsessions.  Her show at Tate Modern is one of the most fascinating exhibitions I have ever seen.

It shows her work constantly changing over the decades which probably mirrors her life which includes living in rural Japan, New York, Tokyo and for the last thirty years living voluntarily in a  psychiatric institution where she has created work hoping to show the psychological trauma she so often feels and wants to escape from. Leaving the exhibition you must navigate through a darkened room covered in mirrors and tiny coloured lights which completely disorientate you and seem to stretch out to infinity. It really is something you should experience if you are in London.

Apologies for the lack of photographs on this post but I couldn’t take my camera into the exhibitions. I’ve also been very busy creating some new products – I’m still at the messy stage but I am really pleased with the pieces that I started in Iceland last month.  I hope to have images up soon!

Short of Inspiration? Visit Reykjavik, That Will Fix You

Having spent the last few nights standing on a remote snow covered lava field in Pingvellir National Park Iceland, I had hoped to be posting magnificent images of the aurora borealis but I’m afraid the famous Northern Lights did not play ball despite the near perfect conditions.

There are however, enough colours in Reykjavik city centre to melt the head of any colour lover.

Coloured facades, Reykjavik.

Iceland is well known for it’s contrasts – fire and ice, dark winters light summers but I hadn’t expected to find so many contrasts in the world of design. I didn’t spot a single international chain shop or restaurant, instead I found row upon row of individual shops/work spaces with the makers living above or behind their showrooms. The designers are using a huge range of ancient craft techniques and creating cutting edge designs to satisfy the hunger of the design conscious locals but also to ship to the best galleries and design stores in New York. In short, very traditional techniques are being used to make ultra contemporary styles.

design spaces Reykjavik

The Icelandics don’t appear to be influenced by design trends abroad, they have their own unique and extremely strong sense of design and as a result are producing some of the most exciting pieces I have seen in years. One of the most impressive workshops I visited was one which was attached to restaurant Forrettabarinn. There, four designers make and display their furniture, jewellery and textiles. It felt a little like some of the venues at London Design Festival, a smaller version of Tent London perhaps but with designers I had never come across making very powerful pieces that I would loved to have taken home with me.

Another striking contrast were the deeply minimal, squeaky clean public buildings (lots of black concrete and stainless steel) which were peppered with tiny elements of highly decorative antiques especially crockery. Oddly enough this gave the sometimes fairly austere and rather serious spaces a fantastic sense of quirky humour.

Minimal working with decorative

I couldn’t finish this post without mentioning the ridiculously cool Kex Hostel in downtown Reykjavik. It’s housed in a converted biscuit factory and is stuffed full of twentieth century design classics. It has one of Reykjavik’s best bars where jazz bands play and many a celebration takes place. It summed up Reykjavik to me – work hard, play hard and always, always creative.

Kex Hostel

Colour Specification, a Female Occupation….. Really?

I’ve never been particularly interested in gender traits and try to avoid stereotyping but someone made a comment to me last week that inspired me to do a little research around colour and gender.

I’m not talking about which colours males or females prefer – there is plenty written about this already, I was intrigued to read that throughout history, scholars have claimed that females respond to and feel colour more than their male counterparts.

However, when reading a little deeper on the subject, this theory seems to have stemmed or perhaps been reinforced by nineteenth century French art critics such as Charles Blanc who valued drawing skills over colour and as far as I can interpret,  assumed males to be the dominant sex and so ‘delegated’ colour which was of secondary importance in his eyes, to the female sex. In his book Grammaire du Dessin he writes, ‘drawing is the masculine gender of Art, colour its feminine one’ and goes on to state, ‘painting courts its own destructions and will be corrupted by colour as humanity was corrupted by Eve’ . Wow, strong opinions there then but on a positive note just shows how far we have moved on with regard to equal rights.

There are countless other texts written in a similar vein so I think it may help explain the comment made to me last week which triggered this research.

I was waiting in my local paint shop while the technician mixed my NCS paint colours. The very helpful and friendly manager popped out to chat to me and asked about my latest project. I told him I was specifying colour for a new restaurant and he responded, ‘ah, girly stuff then’. I don’t think he meant to be rude, and I  wasn’t offended, I was just curious that he perceived this type of work to be ‘girly’. If in the twenty first century, colour consultancy is perceived as a female domain, (and this comes as a surprise to me) could it really have just stemmed from sexism in the art world where colour was viewed as secondary to form and therefore dished out to the ‘weaker’ sex?

John Gage in his book, Colour and Meaning  highlights the fact that even the leading mid twentieth century German colour theorist Rupprecht Matthai actively left all judgements of colour harmony to his wife, again reinforcing the notion that colour somehow belongs in the female world. However, Gage also queries whether views on colour and gender may also have a biological as well as cultural basis. He refers to the work of M.Sahlins, ‘Colour and Cultures’,  where it was found that colour defective vision is nearly one hundred times more common among white males than among white females.

I think wherever our views derive from about colour and gender, they all need to be taken with a large pinch of salt. I certainly know many expert males and females working in colour specification so once again, I think I will steer away from any form of stereotyping and assume that there are talented people from both genders working in the fascinating and powerful world of colour.

2012 Warms Up

While Pantone have chosen Tangerine Tango to be their Colour of the Year for 2012,  Dulux opted for a lively juicy red but Crown paints have launched a whole new colour palette, New Directions ,which is intended to encourage us to mix traditional colour groupings together i.e pastels with neons, brights with neutrals, neutrals with pastels (but all still under pinned by neutral grey). So it looks like 2012, Apocalypse or not, is going to be a colourful year with plenty of trending hues emerging from the warm side of the spectrum.

Back blogging on January 5th

It will be interesting to see what iconic Danish brand Vipp will choose for 2012 as their 2011 colour was ‘rising red’ – I will tell you as soon as they announce it but I have a feeling we may see something with a violet tone to it.

Anyway, lots to look forward to but most of all I would like to take this opportunity to thank all subscribers and readers of my blog for being so supportive and jumping in with brilliant comments throughout the year. As all bloggers know, receiving feedback is what it’s all about, so thank you all very much indeed and I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and I look forward to catching up with you around the 5th of January 2012 for another colourful year.

Finding Your Dominant Colour Personality

Scientists, philosophers and artists have been working on colour theories since the beginning of time but the Swiss artist Johannes Itten is the one I keep returning to.

Itten, one of the first teachers at the Bauhaus school of design, approached colour theory not in a purely scientific way like Sir Isaac Newton but from an angle that incorporated a human element. Of course he studied the physics of light waves and the chemistry of how to mix and produce colours but he also acknowledged that “the deepest and truest secrets of color effect are, I know, invisible even in the eye, and are beheld by the heart alone”.

Each quarter depicts a season

While teaching colour harmony to a class of students in 1928, Itten realised that what he found pleasing may not in fact be pleasing to his students. In fact some of them found his harmonies quite discordant. He realised that colours are subjective and individuals have their own personal harmonies.

Itten carried out an interesting experiment with his students. All the students had access to a large array of colours and he asked them to depict (in abstract form) the four seasons using whatever colours they wanted. To his astonishment all the students used completely different sets of colours from each other but everyone could easily depict which seasons their piers were expressing – I am sure you can figure out the seasons I am depicting above.

Following this revelation, he encouraged his students to paint using their own personal spectrum of colours from their four seasons and their paintings that followed were some of their most successful they had created.

Itten’s experiment is such a good example of why it is so important to work out which colours you alone are attracted to. A designer should not push their personal spectrum on to their clients because if the clients are not attracted to the colours they will never feel comfortable no matter how well the project is composed. A designer should encourage the client to find their own spectrum and from there help them to work with their colour palette. Or as Itten put it, “to help a student discover his subjective forms and colours is to help him discover himself”.

The Importance of Seasonal Colour

I rather liked this “test” Resene Paints have added to their site to help clients discover their colour personality (although I came out two seasonal….I always wanted a Winter and a Summer home……