Your Color Connection
“The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color.”
- Hans Hoffman
Several times a month sales representatives come to my studio to show me the latest offerings from design houses. As I fan through the colorful samples I am frequently asked the same question, “What colors are you working with this season?” That question confounds me every time I hear it, but my reply is always the same. “I’m working with whatever colors my clients need.”
I understand why that’s not an unusual question for them to ask a designer. The assumption is that color is temporary fashion, like skirt lengths and hairstyles. Home and fashion magazines splash the headline This Year’s Color Trends and before we know it we are seeing those newly anointed colors bleeding from everything from sweaters to stand mixers.
Was there a poll of our mass consciousness and we all agreed to love the same color – at the same time? Hardly. Like just about everything else we are told we need, we love and we can’t live without, color has been researched, synthesized and marketed to us (sometimes years in advance) by color forecasting companies that reduce the glory and personal identification we have with color to a formulated and packaged product. Colors that are all the rage now will quickly find themselves sitting next to avocado green and mauve, and dismissed as passé .
While I do agree that color forecasting is a great way of bringing new and interesting color stories for us to explore, I strongly disagree that color is something to be reduced to a mere 6 month trend. To me, color is something deeper and much more meaningful. Rather than think of it as something external and transient, I think of color as a really powerful tool that can help people to recalibrate, realign and reconnect to their surroundings and even to themselves.
That sounds like I’m asking a lot out of the primary colors and their hued offspring. But there is a secret power in color that, once understood, has huge potential for us to manifest the surroundings that best suits us and we feel good in. Think of the color that flatters you when you wear it. Do you notice people complimenting you or asking if you’ve done something different? Most of us look and feel better in certain colors, so why not extend that same experience to our surroundings. Rather than going with external trend, why not work with what you are naturally drawn to.
There is a reaction humans have to color that happens in the gut and the heart, not the head. Some make us feel wonderful, some make us feel gloomy, and that is a very individualized experience. When I begin a new design project a client’s color preferences are the critical starting point for me to calibrate the right environmental energy to match their own.
I believe there is a unique vibratory frequency that emanates from every color. For example, the vibratory energy of yellow feels quite different than the vibratory energy of navy blue. We humans have unique vibratory frequencies too. It is what gives us our individuality and guides us to what we find attractive, soothing or nurturing. I believe that when our own vibratory frequency is matched with a color’s compatible frequency we feel a positive connection.
When those vibratory signatures are not compatible there is literal clash. This incompatibility can make us feel irritable, anxious or even depressed. Imagine the impact of living with color energy that is incompatible with our own.
I can’t tell you how many homes I see that are color mismatches to their owners. Perhaps the color choices were inspired by a picture in a magazine or admired in a friend’s home. If the homeowner is only being cued externally and not checking in internally to gage their own color compatibility they may wind up with a room that is aesthetically pleasing but no matter what they do it just never seems to feel right. They may rearrange furniture and re-hang art or add new accessories to no avail. When the color compatibility is wrong from the get-go, nothing you can do will make it feel better.
There is another variable that needs to be considered once we have found our own vibratory color match - and that is that every physical space has a different vibratory energy too. Perhaps colors that worked beautifully in your old home look awkward and forced in your new one and an adjustment needs to be made.
Forcing a color’s energetic frequency on an incompatible space can make it a place you just don’t want to spend time in. I’m fortunate to be able to read the energy of both person and space to find the common vibratory fit. I have a virtual viewfinder that flips in my head, allowing me to see, and feel, possible color combinations. Each hue passes by my mind’s eye until I get a “hit” – that feeling in my gut that says, “this is the one”. Occasionally, I am surprised at the colors that come forward, but I know never to second guess a strong match. Listening and feeling are sometimes more important than seeing when searching for the right combination.
Imagine the therapeutic benefit of tapping into the right vibratory energy for you.
Understanding the importance of energetic compatibility is critical in realigning ourselves to a space or internal place that feels right. Harnessing the energy of color by matching it to our own can be valuable in that re-alignment process.
By understanding our individual connections to color we have the ability to manifest (or correct) whole environments that support what we need – calm, creativity, well-being, etc. What if more people surrounded themselves with things they found beautiful? Imagine the impact that would have on the individual, the family, the community…the planet? We have that ability and color is a powerful way to get us there. It is one of the gifts of the universe whose power shouldn’t be trivialized as a fleeting trend.
