Using Yellow in Interior Design

A Most Difficult Shade to Use and an Anomaly on the Color Wheel

Jan 28, 2008 Renee Blixt

Yellow is a strange color; it is hard to paint with, and is psychologically tricky to look at. Find out what the buzz is about yellow.

Yellow is quite strange. It is difficult to match yellow to the rest of house when re-painting, and is a bit confusing to the brain. What causes these odd responses to yellow?

What Yellow Means

Yellow is a color that signifies happiness and warmth, as it is warm and luminous like sunlight. However, it also stimulates the “caution” center in our brains. That cautious feeling causes something that is yellow to be easily noticed and grab people’s attention, but it does so at the expense of the viewers’ comfort.

Why Yellow is So Weird

Psychological Factors: Like the sun, too much bright yellow hurts the human eye, and generally agitates people. Psychological studies have proven that brightly painted walls causes feelings of turmoil and hostility. Babies cry more and adults lose their tempers more often. Dark yellow hues provoke nausea.

Like red, yellow speeds up metabolism. Take a look around a fast-food restaurant, and it becomes noticeable that true yellow is used in abundance. That’s because a diner will be hungrier when surrounded by bright colors, and will therefore purchase more food at one time.

Color Theory Factors: Look at the spectrum in Figure 2. Notice that the yellow band is narrower than the other colors, and that it has a streak running through it. True yellow hues are rarer than other hues. Once yellow is lightened or darkened, it changes very quickly.

Now, take a good look at a color wheel (If one is not available, click on Figure 3 to see a close-up of the photo.) Because of the way the eye sees yellow, when colors that contain yellow are darkened or shaded with black, the color is changed more dramatically than when color that don’t contain yellow are shaded.

Closely observe the yellow section of the color wheel; see what happens to yellow and orange when they are darkened. Darkened yellow appears greenish and darkened orange seems brown. The yellow section of the color wheel has a much smaller range than the other colors. That's why it's so difficult to find a yellow that pleases a particular person, and why it's so difficult to match it with other colors; the color wheel "runs out of ideas" very quickly, even though it is a primary color.

Why Yellow is so Wonderful

Like anything else, the color yellow can be used strategically in moderation to brighten up a room or to emphasize positives in décor. Small doses of bright yellows added to rooms add punch, catch the eye, and make rooms feel lively. Used in moderation, the strange characteristics of yellow will work for the atmosphere of the house, not against.

Sources:

Scraps of Wisdom by Annie’s Attic Scrap Crochet Club. Annie’s Attic, 2004.
Itten: The Elements of Color by Johannes Itten. John Wiley and Sons, 2003.

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