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THE COLOUR AFFECTS SYSTEM OF APPLIED COLOUR
PSYCHOLOGY
Authors: ANGELA WRIGHT & DEBORAH MURPHY
Affiliation: Colour Affects, London, UK.
Address 3rd Floor, 50 Great Portland Street,
London W1W 7ND
E-mail: abw@colour-affects.co.uk
Presentation: Oral
Classification: H - COLOUR PSYCHOLOGY
Colour Harmony
ABSTRACT
After formulating the Wright Theory in 1984, the author established a colour consultancy with
the sole objective of testing the theory empirically. Finding that it held true consistently, the
Colour Affects System of applied colour psychology was developed, from its tenets.
In the process, it was found that colours put together to work well psychologically appeared to
have an extra dimension of colour harmony that is unmistakable. Colour combinations are crucial
to positive application of colour psychology. People often attribute their emotional response to a
single colour on which they are consciously focusing, but in practice response is not actually
triggered by single colours, but by colour combinations. Individual colours do have universal
psychological properties, but, as with musical notes, it is only when they are combined that they
produce an emotional response – which can be a positive or negative expression of the basic
properties of the colour. In isolation, there is no such thing as a good colour, or a bad colour.
For example, red is universally stimulating, physically; reactions include raised pulse rate and
increased perceptions of temperature. This is universal. However, whether that stimulus is
perceived as exhilarating and exciting or as demanding and a strain depends on how the red is
used – the exact version of red in relation to other colours in the colour scheme. Disharmony
negates.
Initial research and analysis of these colour combinations demonstrated that colours which the
author grouped together, in line with the system, had mathematical correlations within each group
that did not exist between colours from different groups. This suggested that a system of colour
harmony that is algorithmic was a very real possibility.
Furthermore, the author has concluded that it is difficult to establish firm rules about response
based on single, or even two colours 1, 2, 3 Perhaps this is the reason for colour psychology
historically having been deemed too subjective to predict (or teach). There are no colours that are
not open to a myriad of different interpretations, depending on the context and how they are
combined, just like words in the English language. For example, take the word ‘cheap.’ When
combined with the word ‘cheerful’ as in, ‘cheap and cheerful’ it has positive connotations of good
value, clear simplicity, even fun. However, when combined with the word ‘nasty’ it immediately
connotes a raft of negative qualities, including poor quality, bad design, even a suggestion of
grubbiness. In his early experiments testing the Wright Theory, Professor I C McManus, of
University College London, used groups of six words/colours. For the major cross-cultural
research project carried out in 2003/4, sponsored by one of Colour Affects’ corporate clients and
known as the OKI Project, Professor M R Luo used groups of five.
Key words: Harmony. Psychology. Algorithms.
Contact: abw@colour-affects.co.uk
THE WRIGHT THEORY/THE COLOUR AFFECTS SYSTEM
The basic tenets of the System are:
1. The psychological effects of colour are universal.
2. Each main hue affects distinct psychological modes
3. Different versions of the same hue have different affects within the hue’s mode
4. Every shade, tone or tint can be classified into one of four colour groups.
5. Every colour will naturally harmonise with every other colour in the same group. Colours
from different groups never truly will.
6. All humanity can be classified into one of four personality types.
7. Each personality type has a natural affinity with one colour group.
8. Response to colour schemes is influenced by personality type.
RESEARCH
In 1991, Professor I.C. McManus, of the Psychology Department at University College London
became very interested in the theory and decided to carry out some tests, for his own interest.
Using physical materials provided by Colour Affects to the audience at a seminar which Professor
McManus had attended in London, rather than a computer, he devised two tests:
1. Using 60 psychology students, all English native speakers, a list of 6 adjectives
describing characteristics or emotions (e.g. bright, cheerful, warm etc.) and four
alternative small colour wheels were presented. Observers were asked to choose which of
the four colour wheels best captured and expressed the overall feeling of the list of words.
2. The second experiment asked the observers to decide which of two colour wheels was the
more harmonious. In each pair of colours, one wheel had colours all drawn from the same
colour group and the other had just one colour changed to a colour from a different group.
The results averaged over 80% throughout both experiments, apart from one inconsistency. In the
second experiment, using a series of sets of twenty pairs of colours, an average of over 80% of
the participants chose the colour wheels that were drawn from the same Colour Affects colour
group as being the more harmonious. However, in one of these sets, agreement with the theory
(i.e. choice of the wheel containing colours from the same group as more harmonious) was still at
this high level until the ninth pair, where agreement dropped dramatically. This applied until the
seventeenth pair – after which agreement rose again. It was later discovered that one of Professor
McManus’ assistants, when sticking down the colour swatches, had accidentally transposed two
rather similar greens in these nine pairs – so that within the terms of the theory, neither of the
colour wheels in these pairs was harmonious.4
In the same year, Professor M R Luo asked the author to classify colour cards into the four groups
(by eye). When scanned into a computer, it was found that the colours classified into each group,
in line with the theory, clustered in the same space. This suggested that the System was
algorithmic.
Subsequently, in a cross-cultural research project, repeating the initial tests under more controlled
conditions, and using the first computerised version of the Colour Affects System (‘Ultracolour’)
and the latest colour display technology, agreement with the theory averaged 76.8%.5
Having continued to test the theory empirically, and develop the Colour Affects System in both
personal and corporate consulting, early in 2008 it became clear that, in order to produce a really
effective software program, it was imperative to clarify the algorithms at the heart of the System.
To that end, it was essential to identify exactly where the borderlines occur between the four
groups. The authors, Angela Wright and Deborah Murphy - a colleague who has expertise in
colour and in computer science - have analysed every colour in the full NCS System, in order to
clarify the underlying patterns and identify where the borders occur.
The findings so far suggest:
a. The basic principles of the Colour Affects System hold true. Every single shade, tone or
tint can be classified into one of just four colour groups; all colours in one group have an
extra dimension of visual (and psychological) harmony within each group, which the
great majority of people agree are harmonious.
b. All the basic hues, apart from pure white and black, appear in all four groups.
c. The borders between the groups occur in different places for each hue angle.
At this point, in order to clarify the term ‘borders’ it should be explained that each colour is
classified in terms of:
Lightness/darkness
Saturation
Coolness/Warmth
Measurement of the first two is quite straightforward; it is the third one – coolness/warmth - that
has always been considered subjective. Traditionally, cool/warm characteristics are associated
with the Hue angle axis. This is of course still valid; however, there is far more to it than that
There are cool reds, yellows and oranges – and warm blues, greens and purples. It was necessary
to establish exactly at what point, for example, a cool red becomes a warm purple, or a cool green
becomes a warm blue etc. At what point does an orange go cold? Using the details recorded from
our classification exercise and evaluating at the level of Hue Angle a preliminary calculation has
been made, which can best be described at this stage of the work as resulting in a scale from Cool
to Warm. Plotting these results against Hue Angle gives the following results
Warm
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Predom Warm
x x x x x x x x
Neutral
Predom Cool
x x x x x x x x
Cool
x x x x x x x
R 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 B 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 G 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 Y 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 R
As would be expected, a great concentration of warmth around yellow, cool around blue and
green and a bit of both around red, but:
d. When the whole hue wheel is divided into not four, but eight sectors, the patterns become
clearer to identify. The eight sectors are; red, orange, yellow, “greellow” (a better name
for the area between yellow and green will be sought!) green, cyan (the area between blue
and green) blue and purple.
Warm
x x xxxx xxxxxx xxxxx x
Predom Warm
x x x x x x x x
Neut ral
Predom Cool
x x x x x x x x
Cool
x x x x x x x
R 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 B 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 G 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 Y 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 R
Orange
Red
Red
Blue
Purple
Cyan
Green
Greellow
Yellow
Within each sector it is apparent that there is a fluctuation in temperature, and the fluctuation is
not large in the “greellow”, yellow and orange sectors. However, in terms of harmony, only
colours found in, for example, the coolest part of the sector perceived as Orange harmonise with
greellows in the same position on the cool/warm scale within their sector, and the same position,
the coolest area, of the blue sector etc. The apparent warmth/coolness of a colour can still be
considered to be relative to its perceived hue – i.e. a cool yellow is not as cool as a cool blue - but
it is unmistakeably cool in relation to other yellows.
Work is now underway on calculations to factor this relative warmth/coolness into an algorithm
for predicting Colour Harmony.
It is hoped this will enable Colour Affects to produce a piece of computer software based on these
algorithms – which will work for everyone, regardless of which colour system is used.
References
1. Ou, L., Luo, M. R., Woodcock, A., and Wright, A., A study of colour emotion and colour preference,
Part I: colour emotions for single colours, Color Research and Application 29, 232-240 (2004)
2. Ou, L., Luo, M. R., Woodcock, A., and Wright, A., A study of colour emotion and colour preference,
Part II: colour emotions for two-colour combinations, Color Research and Application 29, 292-298 (2004).
3. Ou, L., Luo, M. R., Woodcock, A., and Wright, A., A study of colour emotion and colour preference,
Part III: colour preference modelling, Color Research and Application 29, 381-389 (2004)
4. Wright, A. The Beginner’s Guide to Colour Psychology. London: Kyle Cathie Limited. (1995)
5. Li-Chen Ou, M. Ronnier Luo, Guihua Cui, Angela Wright. A Cross-cultural Study on Colour Emotion
and Colour Harmony in Association with the Ultra-colour System, Colour Affects. (2004).
