Are colors really meaningful?  Or is it just one of those things culture has taught us to see meaning where there is not?

Millions of studies show that colors do have meaning. We choose products of every kind just because of their color and some colors have the ability to make us feel good… or bad.

So we could say that it has been scientifically proven that colors can control our emotions and influence our decisions. However, I find fascinating that cultures have given meaning to colors in a very non-scientific way.

Every Blue Monday I ask myself the same question: why is blue a sad color in Anglo-Saxon cultures? For me, as Spaniard, blue is the color of the sky, the sea, water, life, the Earth! In my mind it is related to beautiful and happy things and I can’t think of a single blue sad thing. Apparently, the association of blue with sadness in English language is not clear but it made me reflect about why colors can have such powerful associations in every culture.

Blue Monday can be a good example: The concept itself, being the 3^rd Monday of January the saddest day of the year, was invented with no scientific evidence by a holiday company who wanted to increase sales in this low-spending month in 2005.

15 years later, the concept still stands (although the company closed) and I can’t help but feel that color significance is behind this endurance. You can see many other examples in festivities and it seems to work pretty well: black Friday, red and pink Valentines day, white Christmas, black and orange Halloween…

Now I think about how colors have shaped our cultures without us noticing: flags, sport teams, universities, companies, political parties… they all want us to associate them with a color and once they achieve it, it’s almost impossible to change because cultural backgrounds are the most difficult things to adapt. Can you imagine a blue Coke? A green US flag? A yellow Real Madrid uniform?

All these examples may have changed in shape, size, style, font… but color? It still hurts my eyes when I see a green McDonalds.

That is why I can’t think of blue as sad. I was not raised in that culture and now it’s hard for me to embrace new feelings related to such a cultural thing like a color.

Can you think of any other examples when the use of a color surprised you when travelling or when learning new languages?

Image by Disney Pixar