Karen Wight -- NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Color is fascinating. Show me an avocado green refrigerator and all kinds
of memories come flooding back, like a movie in the back of my mind.
Color cliches, like the peach and aqua of the ‘80s, not only scream era,
but also literally color our memories of people, places and things.
Color trends do not just “happen.” Color is big business in many
industries: fashion, commercial development, health care, food and the
automotive industry.
Companies have entire divisions devoted exclusively to color development
and trends. They track color preferences across the country and isolate
regional preferences. Color is studied on a worldwide scale also; there
are clear patterns of color association with geographical location,
cultural factors, age and gender that influence color selection.
Where do these color trends begin? The answers are surprising and far
more detailed than you might expect.
One of the many color “think tanks,” Color Marketing Group, forecasts
future trends and analyzes color date.
Companies that consult with color marketing groups include Nike,
Hallmark, Corian and car companies. The health-care industry listens to
the research from these groups to determine colors for operating rooms
and recovery areas.
Cool colors in the blue-green range have been shown to increase
concentration and manual dexterity. Therefore, “hospital green” is not a
random choice, but for an operating room, it’s a calculated decision.
Recovery rooms with bright colors, usually in the warm colors, create a
better healing environment.
Nursing homes also create environments that are user-friendly.
Alzheimer’s patients show preference to solid colors and contrasts
between floors, counters and doors. This helps the brain eliminate
confusion between different spatial planes and creates a non-distracting
environment. Other nursing home patients prefer colors and patterns from
the era in which they spent their 40s and 50s, when they were financially
and physically comfortable.
The food industry pays particular attention to the many studies done on
behalf of colors that stimulate appetite, increase visual enjoyment and
affect the perceived tastes of certain foods.
Young children choose red and yellow as their two preferred colors. (Can
you say McDonald’s?) Certain shades of gold stimulate a “customer
purchase response” for fast food. Color can stimulate salivary glands and
create a desire for sugar. The color red increases perceived sweetness
via its association with cherries and strawberries.
There are acupuncturists who claim that colors have healing properties.
Some examples include using an indigo environment to help toothaches, and
orange to help decrease baldness. These specialists depend on colors to
change our flow of energy and promote well-being.
Phrases like “feeling blue” and “green with envy” are testimony to our
association of color and mood.
Car companies are famous for using left-brain preferences and turning
them into right-brain marketing tools.
Toyota has companies worldwide that work on color trends with regard to
region, cultural preference and gender association. Calty, a division of
Toyota’s Worldwide Marketing Division, located in Newport Beach, devotes
full attention to North American buying trends and indicators for future
buying preferences. Car color is an expression of how people see
themselves: aggressive, sexy, affluent or fun.
Chris Dickey, color and trim manager for Toyota Sales and Marketing of
North America, devotes herself to studying color trends worldwide. Some
of the results she shared with me were surprising while others were
predictable.
Beach areas such as Newport Beach and Palm Beach prefer white, linen,
ivory and beige. Pasadena prefers bronze, gold and ocher -- shades Dickey
termed “old money colors.”
Urban areas such as New York and Chicago prefer black. Warm-weather
states tend to prefer light colors. Dark colors are more popular in
Europe.
In Japan, blue, green and white cars scored lowest on the preference list
and were considered ugly. In fact, 61% of men and women polled said that
if they couldn’t get their first color preference on their car of choice,
they would not buy the car.
Men outnumbered women in this area; 64% of men said it was their first
color choice or nothing, compared to women at 58%.
As far as predictors for future colors go, Dickey said “new” colors and
color combinations come from industrial “contract” projects. “Hotels are
huge trendsetters because we become comfortable with colors, and this
translates into other areas of our lives,” according to Dickey’s
research.
Other areas that influence our color preferences include shopping malls
and sports arenas. Does high fashion color our world?
Dickey answers: “Actually, high fashion is several seasons behind. There
are eight color cycles in a calendar year and high fashion does not
dictate color preference to the extent you might think.”
And the color prediction from a woman whose job it is to know our color
preference before we know it ourselves?
“Silver,” Dickey says, “definitely silver for 2003.”
* KAREN WIGHT is a Newport Beach resident. Her column runs Saturdays.
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