The Effects of Color and Light on Your Mood

When I was younger and felt “under the weather” or was having a bad day, my mother always used to kick me to the outdoors and tell me to soak up some sun. I always thought that it was all mumbo jumbo, the sun can not really have an effect on my mood, can it? As a young child I thought it was a myth, just another way for my mother to subtly tell me to stop moping around the house and get me out into the fresh air. Come to find out, her words of wisdom were true, the sun really does have an impact on your mood! Have you ever felt like you were walking on sunshine, and nothing could get you down? Or have you ever needed more than just a couple of pushes on the snooze button yet still to wake up and find yourself in a bad mood already, only to get worse when you step outside? All you want to do is crawl in a corner and hide for the rest of the day? These might just be reactions to the effects of light and color. Light and color, natural as well as indoor lighting, can play tricks with how the body thinks, effect sleep habits, and effect overall wellness.

There is an abundance of ways light and color can play tricks with how your body thinks. Color has an impact on everything. When you walk into a restaurant and instantly become hungry is one way that color has an influence. When you feel antsy in one room and calm in the other is another way that color has an effect, this is all because of the atmosphere of that room, which is altered by color.

This figure shows adult/elderly, multicultural, and psychopathologic responses about their color preferences from 25 different color studies. Elderly and psychopathologic people hardly strayed from the normal responses. (Schatz , and Bowers 21- 27)

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Light and color definitely have an effect on our moods and overall well being. Whether it be the function of all the systems of your body, strengthening to vision, getting a restful night’s sleep, or just putting a smile on your face, light and color play a major role. When you see a food add on the television and your stomach grumbles in favor it might be a good idea to check the colors in the background, they may be messing with your mind. Next time your having a good day and you are not sure why, maybe look up at the sky and see if the sun is shining, or next time you are down and you don’t feel like getting out of bed maybe it’s a gloomy day and you hear rain. If someone tells you that you have a sunny personalty, maybe its because you have been having good weather or the next time you have the blues maybe you need to paint your walls to brighten it!