Hello colour lover!

As January seems to be dominated by talk of Blue Monday I thought I’d share 5 fun facts about the colour blue to show you there is more to blue than well… feeling blue.

1. Blue is the World’s Favourite Colour

Ironic isn’t it, the colour that gets this label of feeling low and miserable every January, is for the rest of the year, the world’s most favourite colour!

Whenever there’s a survey asking people what’s their favourite colour, it seems to always come out as blue.

The surveys don’t really go further than this one question or delve into whether there is a particular blue. It could be simply down to our love of blue skies and blue oceans and seas or even the blue of our favourite sporting team.

Whatever it is, blue always comes out on top. When I’m asked my favourite colour, it’s orange. Which colour would you pick?

2. Blue is the rarest colour in nature

Isn’t that interesting? Blue is the world’s favourite colour – it’s above us in the sky and we are surrounded by blue seas and ocean and yet when it comes to blue in nature, it’s the rarest colour.

How blue is made is a mind blowing mix of chemistry, physics and evolution as they aren’t pigments – they are made with microscopic structures which continues to fascinate scientists just like with the blue of butterflies.

We often call things blue but they are really purple like blueberries. The blue whale is closer to grey. Even blue eyes aren’t blue – oh and they are the rarest eye colour too!

3. Colour in culture blue

It’s fascinating how blue can have such difference significance depending on the country. This is know as colour in culture or colour symbolism.

For example, in Japan, blue means fidelity. In the West, blue is associated with sadness and feeling low, which is why we say ‘feeling blue’.

When it comes to Hinduism, blue is the colour of Krishna and represents love and divine joy.

4. We associate blue food as being poisonous

When we see blue food, we instinctively think it’s poisonous and unsafe. Just thinking of blue strawberries or blue meat is enough to make your stomach turn! There is actually no such thing as blue food – and if you’re about to say blueberries, take a closer look: they’re purple.

We’re now becoming more familiar with blue in sweets, but brands have had to do a lot of marketing around their use of the colour. They often try to make blue more popular with campaigns that encourage us to take a risk, dare us to try it.

Fancy a blue macaroon?

5. The psychology of blue

We saw earlier how we are surrounded by blue, above us in the sky and in our seas and ocean and that it’s the world’s favourite colour.

If we look at some of its positive psychological traits we see they are mostly related to the mind. This is because blue affects us mentally such as logic and clarity of thought and focus. Lighter tones of blue aid with mental calm, serenity and reflection – possibly where the saying ‘blue sky thinking’ derives from.

Want to learn more?

Head over to buy The Little Book of Colour where you can find out How to Use the Psychology of Colour to Transform your Life.

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Wishing you a colourful day!
Karenx

All images Shutterstock except butterfly image by Michal Mrozek on Unsplash macaroon image by Dilyara Garifullina on Unsplash