Rainbow Color Theory: That we benefit from being surrounded by the full rainbow of color in our daily lives.

The Rainbow Challenge

Take a walk through your house and check each room for color.

Designers tell us, sensibly, that it is best to decorate using neutrals as basics, and then add pops of color with pictures and throw cushions that can be easily changed and refreshed by whim. This sounds great… except busy people sometimes don’t get around to buying colorful art or new throw cushions. So neutrals like gray, beige wood floors, white, and more gray become the background of our lives, and unchosen colors from the random items we’ve picked up along the way constitute our palette.

I walked into my living room and looked around. I was lucky; the BuyOwners who flipped this house our way had painted it throughout a warm color between apricot and saffron, relieved by white trim on our wide baseboards and sashed windows. We own two forest green couches, one a fold-out somewhere around 35 years old and showing a little wear on the handlebars, and the other an overstuffed gift from Amazon, for whom I have the luck of being a product tester.  So, a deep green and light saffron, white on the trim, and deep brown floorboards. We are saved by the walls of books, whose spines are of every color.

Red - Um, some book jackets

Orange - walls! apricot/saffron. Salt lamp.

Yellow - Um, some book jackets

Green - large and small couches, lamp, pillows

Blue -???

Purple -- discussion to follow

But no blue. Where’s the blue?  

There’s no blue in my whole living room! Last year when I maniacally felt a need for new throw cushions, I should have gone with sky blue instead of a black and white bird pattern! What was I thinking?

I wasn’t thinking about rainbows.  Rainbows are for children, right? Like a box of crayons or a set of Legos.  Too many colors. It’s a sign of maturity to learn to match your socks. To coordinate your outfits. Look at the layouts in house magazines. White. Gray. Black. With a pop of -- yellow! Or -- turquoise! Or -- aubergine!  Sharp contrasts are an important facet of graphic design. Your eye goes to the picture of a single red pillow on a white bed. This technique is successful for the page or the screen. Great for selling pillows or paint colors. But you actually live a life in three dimensions. Do you need your eye to be drawn to your red pillow when you walk into your bedroom? Good for a magazine cover. Bad for real, nonvirtual life.

We spend a lot of time in our boxes.

Rainbow Color Theory: That we benefit from being surrounded by the full rainbow of color in our daily lives..

Mightn’t we benefit by surrounding ourselves with the fullness of color?  Is it possible that by accidentally omitting certain colors from our daily lives -- simply because that poster from the 80s concert didn’t feature green or blue -- our moods are adversely affected? Why are we allowing ourselves to be so limited in the colors that make up our indoor worlds?

I'm not talking about painting actual day-glo primary color rainbows in every room. There's a palette for everyone, from the pastel, the subdued to the overbearing. And I'm not talking about walls of color. I'm talking about vases, paintings, throws. Details. Paying attention to details.

And wait! Looking again, there is blue! Over the TV hangs an oil painting I found in my garage. I don't know where it came from, but the daubs of orange and yellow leaves blended so nicely with my apricot/saffron walls I hung it up. With its brilliant turquoise sea and radiant sky blue. I hung it without thinking in a pivotal location, a focal point, and my eye goes to it automatically whenever I survey my domain. Just what was needed.