Social
The colour blue gets near opposite reactions from people depending on whether it is a cool or warm shade. Warm blues are perceived as calm, peaceful, secure, and summery but cool blues are seen as icy, distant and cold. Businesses often use blue in advertising if they want to come off as reliable and stable. This colour creates feelings of sadness so a drawing that is predominantly blue comes off sad, lonely, and abandoned. Your experience can change the mood a colour gives off if you associate blue with football then it will give off excitement and pride. Readers describe blue as being intense, orderly, calming and inspiring.
Scientific
Blue is the most popular colour in the world according to the study done in 2015 by yougov, because of this it is often viewed as non threatening. Businesses often paint offices blue as it has been proven that people work better in this environment. The colour blue can lower your temperature and heart rate. Our eyes can only see three colours, the primary colours of light red, green and blue and by combining these you can see many more colours. Blue was the first synthetically produced colour made by the Egyptians which they used to paint ceramics and statues.
Cultural
Blue is seen as conservative and traditional as it comes off as non-threatening. This colour suggests saftey and trust which is why it is the standard colour for police uniforms and banks. In markating blue is often used as people associate it with safety and comes off as harmless. Some people relate blue to immortality, spirituality and heaven. In Hinduism the colour embodies Krishna who is the god of protection, bliss, love. Cristians identify with blue as it is the colour of Mary’s cloak but it can also represent mourning. Textile dye in early modern Europe was made from woad, because the dye was expensive to produce only the rich wore clothes made from this, so the colour was linked with nobility and later became know as royal blue.
Historical
Around the 1920s people started assigning colours to sexes pink being for boys’ as it was a more distinct and strong colour and blue for girls’ as it was more dainty and delicate. We now know this to be the opposite today and children born in the 1940s were the first one to be dressed in the sex-specific clothing we know today. This trend took break in the mid 1960s and 70s due to the womens’ liberation movement as it was believed that girls that wore ‘girly’ clothing would be less successful in the future. Sex-specific clothing came back strongly in the 1980s as parents could clean colourful clothes without damaging them and know the sex of the baby before its born. Blue pigment was originally only used by the rich as lapis lazuli the gemstone it was made from was considered as precious as gold.