Blue Skies

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Shinnecock Landscape William Merritt Chase

As artists, we breathe a sigh of relief when the Wizard of Oz movie takes us from black and white into full color. After all, colors are the artist’s tools and it is unimaginable to think of life without them. But why do people have different favorite colors?

Many studies have been conducted to try to answer the question, with varying results. Psychology Today magazine cites a study done by psychologists at the University of California Berkeley (1) which tested 48 participants who rated 32 colors in order of how much they liked each color. They found that muted or pastel colors were less favored than bright colors. Blues, reds and greens were most highly favored. Brown and olive green ranked lower than orange or yellow. The researchers continued by having study participants rate the appeal of certain objects—objects which tend to have specific colors (for example, red apples and brown dirt). They compared these rati…