Does the Color You Wear Affect Your Mood?
Imagine if we told you the color of clothing you wear can affect your mood, impacting the way you feel. Would this change the way you put together your outfits?
Well, it’s true! Colors can majorly impact our emotions, from encouraging happiness to even inspiring creativity. Clothing can alter your mood in ways you might not have realized before.
There are certain outfits we wear that can enhance or change the way we were previously feeling before putting them on. For example, when you’re feeling unmotivated and lazy, a good way to get moving is to put on some workout clothes. It can inspire you and shift your mood, encouraging you to become productive, work out, and get moving.
Often, we turn to clothes to uplift our spirits and change the way we feel about ourselves. Hoping to feel powerful and influential? Reach for a crisp, dark suit, formal shoes, and a sleek hairstyle. And yes, obviously, the colors you choose for such a get-up matter a lot.
Not only does what you wear affect your mood but so do the colors those outfits are in.
Research on The Effects of Color on the Moods of College Students (Kurt & Osuekeshows) shows how color can “change our mood from sad to happy, from confusion to intelligence, and from fear to confidence. It can actually be used to level out emotions or to create different moods”.
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Clothing Colors Affect Your Mood
The colors you wear can affect your mood significantly. When you’re happy, you unconsciously reach for lighter, bolder and warmer colors and when you’re sad, you instinctively choose the opposite. But you can also do it the other way around. For example, lighten your mood by wearing colors that affect your mood positively or go for colors that make you more self-confident when you feel shy.
If you’re familiar with color psychology, then this will resonate with you. If not, don’t worry! Within this article, we will give you a quick run-down to understanding color psychology and how it can influence and alter your emotions!
Does the color you wear affect your mood? Absolutely yes! If not, how could something like color therapy even work?
As always, this information is somewhat subjective. Every person is unique! Some colors can impact you differently than they would with others, and sometimes they might not affect you at all. It all depends on who you are and how you feel. However, for us here at Colorbux, colors do impact our emotions! So, let’s get started!
What is Color Psychology?
Before we can begin to fully understand the emotional impact of colors, we need to give a slight introduction into what color psychology is. It’s important to understand the background behind everything. So, bear with us.
Color psychology is the study of how colors can affect your emotional and mental state. In other words: It defines what colors “mean”, how they are interpreted, and what they symbolize.
You will often see businesses promoting certain colors as their brand logos because of the impact and influence these colors can have on their consumers.
This is the color scheme of Colorbux. We use these plus dark gray, (almost) black, and white.
When decorating your house, your business, or your office space, the decision on what color to paint or accent your room with will affect the mood of everyone that enters the space.
It’s believed that certain colors are more motivating, uplifting, and inspiring than others. However, these decisions depend on what emotions and moods you want to bring forth with the room itself.
We discuss the psychology of the most common colors for clothing in a separate article if you’re interested. You can find it here.
We also discuss all these colors individually in articles of their own. You can find the complete list right here:
In this article, we will focus on a few colors and what we can typically infer from them. We’ll answer the question “how does the color you wear affect your mood?” for each and every of the most common clothing colors right here.
But just so you know, you can also change your mood by tapping into Neuro Remapping. With a few exercises, you can remap your brain with ease. This Harvard psychology graduate tells you how:
How do Certain Colors Affect Your Mood?
Brighten Your Mood with Yellow
The brightest and arguably the boldest color for clothing on the color wheel is yellow. Yellow is also the most optimistic color in color psychology. It is believed to ignite creativity, happiness, and excitement!
Yellow: the color that sparks creativity and shouldn’t be taken too seriously. | Socks: The Light Stripes
This color, in its brightest states, will not only help you stand out in a crowd but encourage a glow from within. Summery, warm, and full of light, we can see why it is considered the best color to wear when looking to appear and feel more youthful, energetic, and happy.
Our Very Cherry socks are one of our favorite ways of adding a pop of yellow to your outfit! Guaranteed to boost your happiness. Send us an email asking for a secret discount code on all our socks.
Encourage Excitement with Orange
Orange is an extremely bright and warm color. Similar to yellow, it encourages us positively. It makes us feel excited, happy, and more adventurous.
The color of tangerines, fire, and gorgeous summer sunsets, orange is the true color of motivation. It is also often seen as the color of freedom and optimism!
There is nothing plain or bland about orange, so expect to be the center of attention while wearing it! These are also a great way to grab some eyeballs:
Calm Your Soul With Blue
As this is the color of the sea and the sky, obviously blue represents tranquility! With its properties in instilling trust, loyalty, and security, blue is the perfect color to wear when looking to calm and stabilize yourself or others.
Not only does blue compliment various complexions dark or light, but it is also an amazing way to ground your emotions!
Balance Your Mood With Green
When you think of green, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Personally, for us, it’s nature!
Green is such a balancing color. It’s not always easy to mix and match, but it’s definitely fun and yet soothing. | Socks: Kiwi Kicks
Did you know green is a color that stabilizes, renews, balances, and harmonizes your emotions? If you’re looking to encourage a refreshing, intuitive, and peaceful mood, green (especially dark green) is definitely a color we suggest reaching for more often.
A great way to add green to your wardrobe? Check out our Kiwi Kicks socks! Feel balanced and stabilized all day long.
Dominate With Black
Intense and powerful: black. Typically worn during formal and important events, its lack of color typically forces a more serious appearance. It garners feelings of intimidation, authority, dominance, and control in others. In turn, wearing black makes you feel stronger and more authoritative.
Also, if you’re looking to hide your emotions, and appear mysterious, black is the perfect choice for this.
In a research study conducted by Damhorst and Reed on the effects of color on emotions, they found how “men rated models who wore dark jackets as more powerful and competent than models who wore light jackets”.
Black: dominance, power, and sex appeal - especially when mixed with red.
Look powerful, feel powerful. On the other hand, wearing black can also make you feel emotions of sadness, grief, and loneliness.
Depending upon the situation, either direction is possible.
Wearing black in strong sunlight can also make you feel hot. Maybe you’ve noticed? Though this effectively doesn’t increase your core temperature, it’s still quite annoying.
Ignite Your Emotions With Red
There is a reason Valentine’s Day is marketed using red decorations (red hearts, red roses, red balloons, etc.). This is because the color red encourages passion, desire, and excitement. And yes, most probably it encourages those feelings in you as well.
This gorgeous color is an obvious choice when looking to be bold and attract attention. If you’re wanting to feel strong, courageous, and sexy, while gathering all eyes on you, red is our top recommendation! Passionate, strong, and used to excite, we guarantee any red clothing pieces will be a huge hit.
How Dark or Light Clothes Make You Feel
The lightness of any given color has an influence on your mood.
In general, the lighter a color, the more it will “lighten” your mood. Isn’t it obvious?
On the other hand, darker clothing colors tend to make the wearer more “serious” and often reduce the feeling of being elated or joyful.
Though this rule is mostly true, it does have exceptions – but those are due to cultural differences and depend strongly on the hue of the color. We go into more detail in various other articles including one on Dark Versus Light Colors in Clothing.
What is clear, is that darker colors are perceived to be more dominant. The most dominant of colors being black, as a study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology proves.
Cold Versus Warm Color Clothing
Not just the lightness of your outfit, but also its color temperature impacts your mood.
As a rule of thumb, you can say that the warmer a color, the more it “warms up” your mood. Obvious again, right?
These are the cold colors of the color wheel.
These are the warm color of the color wheel.
Cold colors that lean more towards the blue side of the color wheel are rather calming and soothing on the soul. Wear them if you have to be more at ease, like, for example, when at a job interview.
Warm colors are more energetic and make you feel that way when you wear them. Colors that are neither warm nor cold don’t really influence your perceived energy.
Wear Clothing According to Your Mood
When selecting an outfit, it is important you do so with your own emotions and mood in mind.
If you want to feel powerful, sharp, and intimidating, black is the ideal choice. However, if you are looking to spark your own creativity, or glow from within, and genuinely feel happier, lean more towards brighter colors like yellow.
Depending on who you want to influence, the color you end up choosing can range drastically.
But remember, if your favorite color is green, and it brightens your mood and inspires you to work harder, then don’t let color psychology stop you!
As always, these suggestions are just that, suggestions. And, as always, they’re based on scientific analysis and expertise. More often than not, personal experiences and preferences impact the way we view and feel about a specific color. There are no set-in-stone rules when making personal fashion choices.
So, if you feel like wearing all black, do so. If you don’t, then don’t. It’s up to you.
But, if you want to influence the way you feel on any given day, give color psychology a try and pick the opposite of what you feel like wearing.
Trick Your Brain - Change Your Mood
Did you hear about the 2002 study where the participants had to hold a pencil sideways in their teeth? No? Well, let us explain:
The participants of the study wear asked to hold a pencil between their teeth without their lips touching it. In doing so, they activated the muscles used to smile. While biting on the pencil they had to watch entertaining videos and rate their experience after watching.
Those that activated their “smiling muscles” reported much more positive experiences while watching compared to the control group. Or in other words: the videos were rated funnier because the pencil biters were “smiling”.
But what does this have to do with color?
Well, it proves that you can influence your mood by “tricking” your brain into thinking it feels a certain way. So, for example, you can make yourself feel more confident by wearing a combination of dark blue and black.
This is an outfit that boosts confidence and anyone can wear.
Wear the colors you want yourself to feel like wearing. (Does that even make sense?) Anyway, the best part about this tactic: it actually works.
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