As a teenager, I longed to paint my bedroom walls black. After months of pleading, my parents and I reached a compromise: a single wall covered in matt wallpaper reminiscent of a blackboard. It might as well have been chalked with “Be careful what you wish for”. Once the novelty had worn off, I hated it. Yet, it proved a valuable lesson in the difference between liking the look of a colour and how it feels to live with it.
Colour psychology, the study of how different hues affect our moods and behaviour, might have predicted this outcome. Most of us have an intuitive sense of the major pitfalls, black bedrooms being among them. But how many of us apply colour psychology to our homes? Our wall colour choices can be as arbitrary as my teenage whim: a paint shade plucked from social media, presented to an interior designer via a Pinterest board. We’re also trend led; the Dulux Colour Forecast — now in its 25th year — and similar offerings from paint producers such as Farrow & Ball and Benjamin Moore speak to the zeitgeist for certain colours.
Could there be an alternative approach? Visitors to Making Sense of Colour, an exhibition co-created by Google with art and research lab Chromasonic, have been asked to consider that question. At Salone del Mobile, Milan’s annual design fair, where the exhibition is taking place until April 21, attendees are bathed in vibrant hues of blue, yellow and purple as they walk through a matrix of 21 translucent light and sound chambers.