Many builders and designers steer clear of using bright paint colors in their projects, but now they may start to think otherwise. The use of Tiffany blues and fiery oranges may have a psychological benefit. It’s called chromo therapy, also known as color therapy. It’s the practice of using certain colors to stimulate various emotions, usually happy ones. New York Time’s Caroline Biggs talked to Roberta Freymann, the woman known for the lifestyle brand Roberta Roller Rabbit, to get her take on why exciting wall colors improve mood.
In a 2015 study, “Chromo Therapy: An Effective Treatment Option or Just a Myth? Critical Analysis on the Effectiveness of Chromo Therapy,” Somia Gul, Rabia Khalid Nadeem and Anum Aslam, from the school of pharmacy at Jinnah University for Women in Pakistan, looked at the physiological and emotional effects of color therapy on 200 people between the ages of 15 and 36.
For the study, published in the American Research Journal of Pharmacy, the researchers used lasers of different colors to gauge the physical and emotional responses to light and color of participants with various ailments. They discovered that certain hues have a “tremendous effect” on a person’s mind-set. Red, for example, can enhance alertness; yellow can improve focus; and blue can reduce the onset of stress-related tension headaches.
Their findings concluded that although not widely understood, chromo therapy should be “recognized and adopted by physicians” as an “effective and potent complementary treatment option” for those undergoing conventional forms of treatment.
For those of us who just need a little mood adjustment, however, color can also be helpful. As designers have long known, by enhancing the architectural features of a space, paint can affect the way you feel in a room.
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