Colors that relieve depression and anxiety

At present, there is no "standard answer" that applies to everyone in the field of clinical emotional therapy. For the vast majority of people who have no specific color trauma, the anxiety-relieving effect of cold colors with low saturation and low brightness (Morandi blue, gray-toned pea green, soft mist purple, etc.) has been supported by the most experimental data. However, specific to each person, the most effective color is always strongly bound to your personal memory and growth environment.

Last month, I followed the art therapy team of the city mental health center to go to a high school for an emotional screening. I met a little girl who was so anxious that she couldn't eat. The table mat was bright red, and the pencil case was also fluorescent orange. I said that I had seen a blogger say that bright colors boost energy, but the more I studied, the more irritable she became. Later, we asked her to change the table mat to a gray-green desk mat like a grass field that had just rained. After a follow-up visit two weeks later, she said that the number of times she stared at the questions until she became irritable was reduced by 70%, and even her inability to sit still in class was much better.

This is not a metaphysics. A 2022 experiment at the University of Minnesota has long ago verified it: 62 subjects diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder were arranged to stay in airtight rooms of different colors for 15 minutes, and the changes in cortisol and electrodermal response were monitored. Subjects who stayed in a soft mist blue room with an RGB value of around 180, 210, and 230 experienced an average decrease in stress hormones of 18%, and the degree of relaxation increased by 2.3 times that of subjects staying in an ordinary white room. The principle is not complicated either. The visual stimulation of low-saturated cold tones is weak and will not over-awaken the sympathetic nerves. It just corresponds to the core problem of "nerves that are too excited" in anxiety states. It is equivalent to gently smoothing the hair of nerves that beat too fast.

But interestingly, this conclusion is almost untenable in the field of color anthropology. I met a scholar who studies Pacific Island ethnic groups before and said that when he was doing fieldwork in Fiji, the local indigenous people were far more afraid of the color blue than the color red - because there are typhoons and tsunamis every year in the area, and the blue sea means disasters that kill people. If you arrange a blue healing room for the locals, it will directly trigger the stress response.

The same applies to ordinary people. Last year, a visitor came to me and said that after reading about green healing on the Internet, he spent thousands to paint his bedroom walls avocado green. As a result, he kept his eyes open until dawn for three days in a row, and he felt panicked as soon as he entered the bedroom. After chatting for half an hour, we found out the reason: when she was in elementary school, her mother locked her in a green storage room full of debris and made her stand all night because she failed in the exam. For her, this green color is bound to the memory of "being abandoned and being blamed." Not to mention relieving anxiety, it is good if it does not trigger panic attacks.

It’s not just cool colors that can heal. There is now a school in the art therapy circle that specializes in warm color therapy, targeting those who are long-term lonely and emotionally deprived. Low-saturated milky apricot and bean paste colors will not stimulate the nerves like bright red and bright yellow, but will bring a sense of warmth similar to being hugged. In a previous healing project for empty-nesters in the community, we replaced the cold white curtains in the activity room with apricot-colored curtains. After two months, the frequency of elderly people taking the initiative to participate in activities increased by 32%. Many elderly people said that upon entering the activity room, they felt "warm, like when the children are at home."

If you really want to rely on color to adjust your mood, there is no need to paint the walls or change the furniture as soon as you get started. Just try and make mistakes with small items first: change the wallpaper on your mobile phone, buy a mug of the same color, and put a small table mat on your workstation. Use it for two or three days. If you feel comfortable and open, continue using it. If it feels awkward, change it quickly. Don't believe the marketing nonsense on the Internet that "must be included in the list of healing colors." After all, your own feelings are more accurate than any experimental data.

To put it bluntly, color is never a special medicine that can cure depression and anxiety. It is more like a small piece of velvet you put in your bag to warm your hands in winter. Touching it twice can make you feel at ease when you are anxious. You don’t need to conform to any authoritative standards, and you don’t need to care whether others say it looks good or not. If you look at it and feel relaxed, it is the most suitable healing color for you.