Bamba said:
So guys. Ive been thinking. Does the color of certain things matter at all? For exmaple clothes. Lets say I wear a green shirt. Does it matter that its green in any way? Or its just to make it look nicer?
And for example.....a chair. Lets say Im sitting on a red chair right now. Does it matter at all that its red?
Personally, I think the color of things doesnt matter at all, only makes things look nicer and more colorful.
It all depends on the context. Certain schools in urban areas ban certain colors from being worn, or simply require uniforms because if a student inadvertently wears the color of a gang they could put themselves in serious danger. Other times color might be inappropriate, like wearing a bright orange shirt at a funeral. Then different colors mean different things to people. Personally as a female I never wear pink, even if it's just a part of something like a few lines in a shoe or some stripes in a shirt. I don't mind clothes that are feminine, but to me pink represents a kind of femininity that I am not comfortable wearing. I don't really judge others who wear pink like that, at least not as much as I used to, but I still keep it at an arm's length at all times, and probably always will.
I once heard somewhere that a while back, the leaders of China thought they should change their stop lights so that red means go and green means stop, because communism was represented by red and they felt it should always be a good thing. The problem was not all of the stop lights were changed, so it lead to some problems. But regardless of what political regime you are promoting, red is a pretty universal color for danger, and has been for a long time. It's the color of blood, which is a pretty strong image in anyone's head. However, some other colors that you might consider to be culturally universal aren't. In some Asian religions white is the color for death, not black. Up to the early 1900s, pink was the color for boys in the western world and blue was the color for girls (the reasoning behind that possibly was because pink is close to red which is a manly color, and blue is traditionally the color used for the Virgin Mary so it's supposed to have a quality of innocence purity to it).
And there has been quite a bit of study done in what colors people respond well to in certain situations. WalMart stores used to be just a plain cinderblock gray on the outside, but now they're all being painted a light brown because brown is a more warm and natural color than gray. Hospital rooms are sometimes painted yellow, but they are never painted green because it makes people feel more sickly. And some studies have shown that being locked in a pink prison can make hostile inmates more tame.
So to answer your original question, yes. Color matters. While to you it may be something that is purely aesthetic, there has been a lot of time and money invested in figuring out the power of color. Color can invoke emotions and change the way people see things, and is a powerful tool not only in creative works but also in marketing and lots of areas of psychology.