Colour Psychology: Yellow

Continuing my series on colour psychology with extracts from the book, I wanted to focus on yellow this week. We began, on Monday, with the apartment by fashion designer Roksanda Ilinčić where yellow was the red thread running through her scheme of earth-toned scheme. On Tuesday, I spoke to Oliver Heath about biophilic design and the importance of colour. I have already looked at blue and green but he mentioned yellow as the colour of ripening crops and the sun so I thought I would look at it in more detail here.

little green paint Yellow Pink-Lamp Black

If red is the toddler of the colour wheel – all extremes of emotion and mercurial temperament and orange is your new BFF the colour of companionship and laughter, appetite and intelligence then where does that leave yellow? The second of the three primary colours, when mixed with red (that mercurial toddler) it creates that friendly orange but, on its own, yellow can provoke a range of quite extreme reactions.

Think first of the buttery…