IndieWeb Carnival: Colors

Colors. That is the topic of this month’s edition of The IndieWeb Carnaval, brought to us by Marisabel. I do not think a lot about colors, and I must admit I felt a bit reticent on whether or not I should participate this month. However, my will to explore more topics brought me here, to the text editor.

Do I have a favorite color? Very good question. As a kid, I would’ve probably answered, rather in doubt, blue, or, more specifically, baby blue. But baby blue was perhaps too light to be what I exactly meant. Perhaps slightly darker than baby blue, but lighter than sky blue. But then again, what is sky blue? The sky can go through so many different shades of the same color.

It is time to look at my surroundings, at home. What do I see? We have quite a lot of very boring white IKEA furniture, specially in the bedrooms and office. However, if we step into the living room/kitchen area, it quite changes. We have a very pretty maple-ish colored bookcase and a matching cabinet, a green coffee station with a light wood top, quite a lot of light woord furniture, and even dark wood coffee tables next to the sofa.

In general, we have a lot of earthy tones in our living area, and they go very well with the plants. We have quite a lot of plants, but that’s something that comes more from Chris. I don’t think I’d have bought so many if I had to take care of them alone. Anyways.

I keep looking around. I start seeing a lot of orange and yellow accents. I already thought I’d see quite a lot of yellow. That was another color that I considered to be my favorite at some point. Our balcony carpet, some vases, a pan, vinyl player, are all yellow. And the sofa carpet also has muted yellow tones, mixed with light pink and red.

It is now time to reflect on what I wear. I’m not very adventurous with clothes, and I usually prefer a light-colored t-shirt in white or off-white with some colorful graphics on it. And this is usually paired with some jeans, which I have in different shades of blue - ah, blue again. When it comes to darker clothes, I do have quite a lot of dark blue clothes, but I tend to wear them less.

You know, I first use the lighter t-shirts, and once those are all in the laundry, I move onto the darks. But that’s maybe because my bottoms, whether pants or shorts, tend to be darker, and I want to avoid to be dressed in a single color - and it has happened that I was 100% in blue before, and I did not enjoy it.

The first conclusion I take out of this is that I like being surrounded by color, but I prefer to be a bit more monochromatic/simple in what I wear. And this while avoiding wearing a lot of darker clothes, except maybe for the winter. My winter clothes tend to be slightly darker.

I am also going to let in a secret: my color accuracy is not 100%. Some online tests indicate I have a very mild case of deuteranopia, which is a type of green color blindness. The first time I came across this in my life was in a biology class. There was one of this color blindness tests in the textbook where you supposedly see a number. I could not see the number, but no one believed it, not even my parents. And I was 16 or 17. Why on earth would I be lying about it?

Of course, I did a lot of online tests and the results are clear: there’s a bit of deuteranopia happening. Another time, I was with a friend of mine in Lisbon. We were about to enter an escalator. You know that the escalator usually has a green light or red light, depending on whether that is the right direction to enter or not. You know what I said to my friend? “Why on earth is the light yellow?” She immediately said: “what do you mean? The light’s green!”.

I don’t know if that affects how I see greens in general, or if it’s just the greens that are closer to the yellows, and some lighter variations of reds. It all happens in our brains after all. They can make us happy, or sad, change our emotions.

All in all, I think being surrounded by color is important. It definitely has positive impact in us, as humans. I’m sure there’s research done about it, but I’m too lazy to go look for it now. I don’t think I can choose a favorite color, but there’s something about a lighter shade of blue, a vibrant yellow, and some earthy red and green tones that make me happy.