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This is my favorite article. I found it in an magazine Called Heath – July 1982 by Leslie Kane. They weren’t in business for too long. It was too bad because I liked the magazine. Here is the article.

In any given society, particular colors affect almost everyone in the same way. “Colors have a uniform effect within a Western European tradition, which includes Japan,” says Margaret Walch, director of the Color Association of the United States, which standardizes the 192 colors in current use by industry and government.

In general, dark colors strike us as evil and foreboding, while light colors seem not only cheerful but physically light as well. Bonnie Bender, color marketing manager at Pittsburgh Paints and an authority on color and psychology, reports that in an experiment testing the psychological effects of paint on worker productivity, researchers painted heavy boxes white and light boxes black. Workmen had considerable more trouble lifting the light black boxes than the heavy white ones.

Marcella Graham, a medical technologist, color consultant and interior designer, described an equally dramatic example of the use of color to lift depression and stimulate activity. Called in for a consultation on staff and patient apathy in a hospital, she found the whole place painted light and medium chocolate brown and two shades of grey green. Graham advised painting the hospital floor by floor, using pumpkin orange, strawberry pink, emerald green and lavender. (Simply putting in pink curtains or orange bedspreads produced its effect.) Patient response to the brilliant colors was immediate and positive. Elderly men shaved and dressed to get out of bed each day. Female patients began circulating and visiting in the halls and requested powder, combs, lipstick and stockings. Even staff morale picked up.

If colors exert such a powerful force on mental and physical health, it behooves us to know more about them.”

Next time, we will break down each color. I’ll start with this article and add research from other sources.

A couple of days ago, I was talking with a group of people. When we got on the subject of color, everyone seemed very interested in my knowledge of it and how it affects us. I explained that I had found this research by going to the library in the early 1980s. Now, people have send me articles on present research on color. If you find one, please send me a copy.

Someone requested I put my findings on my blog. So I went through my papers and found the information that I dug out of the library. My information all comes from print books and magazines. If there’s someone out there who can add to it, please do by leaving a comment at the end. I want research and not something from a book that isn’t backed up by research that you can go read yourself.

Looking over my papers, I still like this article, The Power of Color. I found some of the sources on my own and I found the information to be accurate. Today, I found myself enjoying the article as much as I did in 1980. It was written by Leslie Kane in July 1982 for a magazine called Health. In my research, I found a book I think was well written. It was printed by Architecture Digest in the early 1980s. I only have pages copied out of it because it was a limited edition, so please let me know what you want. I’ll start with the article. Here are the first three paragraphs of The Power of Color – and you can decide for yourself.

“Why should hanging pretty red wallpaper in your bedroom inspire you and your spouse to make war and not love? Why does a teacher who holds sway in a yellow-and-brown classroom complain that your child’s fidgety and inattentive while a teacher who instructs in a blue room calls him a model student? And why should your job suddenly become more depressing instead of less when the boss finally shells out for a paint job and your dirty white walls get a coat of nice fresh green?
It’s a matter of science—the science of experiencing color.”

This next part I found to be true in a couple of other books that are out of print.

“Colors are electromagnetic wavebands of energy,” says Alexander Schauss, director of the American Institute of Biosocial Research in Tacoma, Washington. “Each color has its own wavelength. The wavebands stimulate chemicals in your eye, sending impulses or messages to the pituitary and pineal glands near the brain. These are master endocrine glands that regulate hormones and other physiological systems in the body.” Stimulated by response to colors, glandular activities can alter moods, speed up heart rates and increase brain activity.”

If you find this information interesting, I will continue entering Leslie’s article and other information from books that are out of print. Please let me know how you feel about this by leaving a comment below. The picture above is one of my favorite pictures from the Hubble telescope. The color is beautiful and this is a part of our universe. Color is important to your well-being.

This came out of my favorite book on the subject. I have articles that were written around 1980. I will be sharing them with you. Some readers have found other articles on present research on color. They have sent it to me. I’ll be adding this to the series on color in real estate.