A rainbow is the supreme cohesion of how colours can work in your home. If nature can project a colour, shade, tone or tint in one rainbow, then you know you can successfully use that colour to subtle, stunning or secret affect in your home or office.
While it is not my intention to “Unweave a rainbow” (Keats), nor contribute to the debate over Newton’s (1672) “sevenfold prismatic description” of a rainbow, it is my purpose to introduce you to this wonder of nature, providing a generic know-how guide to the influences which can be exerted by each of the seven (7) commonly divided bands (Newton), or colours, of the rainbow.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines a rainbow as “an arch of colours visible in the sky, caused by the refraction and dispersion of the sun’s light by water droplets in the atmosphere”.
It is our own personal vision that transmits those light messages to our brain for interpretation. This personal interpretation is influential on our reaction to particular colours. For example, green may signify ‘lush’ to a gardener; ‘profit’ to a farmer or trader, but may invoke ‘jealousy’ in an underperforming, underpaid sportsperson. (no offense to any one of these professions).
Personal interpretation of colours spans the spectrum of human emotions as much as the rainbow itself spans the spectrum of colours.
So, how do we select colours, from an infinite spectrum, for our particular home or office space?
The basis for understanding the effects of colours on a space, and on the people who share the space, is to gain a general understanding of the power of each of the seven common colours:
Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet
Describing the essence of the effects of individual colours and how they affect your home, influence your decorating choices, combine with the architectural elements of your home and gain insight into the possible reasons a particular space makes you feel loved, happy, or uncomfortable is complex. Having answered an innumerable quantity of colour questions over the years, I thought it appropriate to summarise these for you in a FREE 7 part series.
Each of the 7 parts will include a single common colour of the rainbow and will build to create an easy reference guide with which you can begin to build your very own design library.
Each colour will have its own dedicated post. Each colour will also be available as a FREE pdf download.
The series is called Series I: The Rainbow Effect, and each post in this series, one of the seven colours, will be named as follows:
- The Red Effect
- The Orange Effect
- The Yellow Effect
- The Green Effect
- The Blue Effect
- The Indigo Effect
- The Violet Effect
Tomorrow, in celebration of Valentine’s Day, we will start with The Red Effect.
See you inside the rainbow.
________________________________________If you would like a printable pdf copy of this post please email Archecolour here. I will be writing more about the awe of the rainbow, however if you cannot wait, wikipedia.org is a great starting point.