Colour is Everywhere

We are so used to colour in our everyday life that we take it for granted and don’t realise its effects on our choices and our psyche. When we dress, decorate our house, prepare and choose our food, we unconsciously engage with colour choices. Unlike animals we see in glorious technicolour due to the rods and cones, the light receptors in our eyes. Cones are the ones that detect and interpret colour so we are lucky to have these little guys.

What is Colour?

So now you know how we see colour, but let’s understand exactly what colour is. Here, it gets a bit scientific, but hang in there, the fun bits will come. We are surrounded by all sorts of invisible waveforms called the electromagnetic spectrum. There are x-rays, infra-red, ultraviolet or UV, lots of different waves that are like, the now ubiquitous wi-fi, which is everywhere. These waves have different wavelengths. The shorter the wavelength, the more intense the wave is and the more damaging to human tissue, eg x rays. Visible light is one such band of waves that varies from violet at 400, to red at 700 nanometres in wavelength. A nanometre is only very small, 1,000,000,000 smaller than a meter. Way back, Sir Isaac Newton studied light and discovered its ability to break into seven colours as it passes through a refractive glass prism. After it rains, there are water droplets in the air that act as tiny prisms, splitting the light and creating the beautiful phenomenon of the rainbow. Science after all, is just a confirmation to understand the wonderful natural world. Science also tells us that we see different coloured objects, due to the wavelength of the light reflected from that object, because all other wavelengths or colours have been absorbed. So, a red apple is red because only the red wavelength is reflected our way into our eyes and processed by our cone receptors. White objects reflect all light wavelengths and black objects absorb them all. This also explains why white is cooler to wear and black warmer.

Colour as Therapy

So why do different things reflect different coloured light? Well, that’s a good question and at the same time a mystery. Answers vary from God made it so, to complicated explanations on the matter of various substances. Just be happy with the fact that the trees are green because their leaves reflect only green light which is proven to be a restful colour for us humans. Blue and green, the colours of nature, are good for us. We feel this when we enter a natural area or sit under trees. Their light, and also emitted oxygen as they photosynthesize, are good for us. This brings us to the subject of colour therapy or chromotherapy, using colour to heal or motivate. ‘Chromo’ refers to colour, so chromotherapy is therapy using colour to heal physical, mental, and spiritual issues. Dating back to ancient times, colour therapy is one of the most holistic and simplest therapies involving immersion of the human body with light of assorted colours. All light forms have varying wavelengths and frequencies so light is a vibrational energy. Different colours affect our body cells in different ways. Chromotherapy uses this concept to adjust our creativity, energy, and mood, clearing stress and inducing restfulness and balance.  

Your personal palette

Finding your own therapeutic and beautifying colour palette is fun. I had mine done years ago and used this experience to explain it in my latest book, Colour comes to Tangles. I include an excerpt here as it is self-explanatory and saves me reinventing the colour wheel, so to speak. Vidisha the colour therapist character treats her client, Tanya to the ‘colour me beautiful’ ‘discovery process. Excerpt from Colour Comes to Tangles by Joni Scott “Vidisha draped a brilliant piece of pink cloth around my shoulders. ‘Now, there, that is better. Notice how your skin glows and your eyes shine?’ She removed and then replaced the large silk scarf. Yes, there was a difference, and it was not just the covering of my embarrassingly stained shirt. I definitely looked better in pink. My eyes seemed greener and my skin glowed. Then the pink disappeared, and Vidisha draped me with a shimmering turquoise. ‘Oh, that is beautiful!’ I exclaimed. ‘And now you look beautiful, Tanya. This colour is lovely on you.’ I blushed. Beautiful? How could I be beautiful when my reflection seemed so plain compared to Vidisha’s exotic appearance? There seemed no comparison. ‘Tanya, you are, I believe, a spring personality. Adventurous, brave, and fun-loving.’ ‘I am?’ ‘Yes. But to confirm this, we will drape you in a few wrong colours. Red and navy blue, even black.’ She drew away my beautiful cape of turquoise and draped me with red, then navy and lastly black. None of these colours liked me. I looked drab and dull, as if the sun had gone behind a cloud. ‘Oh,’ is all I could say. ‘Yes, oh. Now some magic again!’ A soft, lemon yellow appeared around my shoulders and again softened my face and I glowed again. ‘There we go. Now your homework, Tanya, is to go home to your cupboard and take out the right colours for you according to this chart. I want you to only wear these until our next session and let us see how you feel. If you don’t have any of these colours, then you may need to buy a few shirts or drape yourself in a scarf. Your skirt or pants can be a different colour but nothing too different. No red, navy or black. Denim is acceptable though.”   Suggested reading (as well as my book!) is The Little Book of Colour by Karen Haller. Karen is a world renowned colour expert and her book is not only fascinating reading but beautifully colourful as well. They may be able to point you to happiness so you can skip along the yellow brick road like Dorothy. Don’t forget to take Toto, though, animals are great therapy too. A topic for another day. Joni Scott is an Australian writer with four published novels. Her website is joniscottauthor.com.