Does red make us more attractive?

culture, design, fashion, ,

A number of studies have concluded that wearing the colour red make us seem more attractive to other people. However, perhaps surprisingly, this is still an effect that is unclear. Although many studies have reported the effect, others have not found it.

Today I was reading a paper by Lehmann, Elliot and Calin-Jageman who conducted a meta-analysis of published work on this topic in 2018. They analysed a large number of studies to try to come to a definitive conclusion. Overall they found a small but statistically significant effect when men were rating women. The effect was much smaller for women rating men.

Interestingly, the authors could not agree on the conclusions and presented two concluding remarks in the paper. The first and third author concluded that the effect of red on attraction was small, potentially nonexistent. However, the second author concluded that there was a small but reliable effect for both men rating women and women rating men.

This reminds me a little of the work on the effect of colour on blood pressure and heart rate where, again, the literature show contrasting results. In this area I have concluded that there might be an effect but that, if there is, it is probably very small. Measuring very small effects can be difficult because of the problem of needing large sample sizes.

A route to better colour knowledge

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I have been providing free information about colour on the internet since … well, almost since the internet existed! My posts here on colourchat have received over 300,000 views from more than 200,000 people. But before I ran this blog I ran something called an FAQ. FAQs were on the internet long before blogs and my colour physics FAQ was available for free for decades, providing free information about colour measurement to anyone who was interested. I have also contributed to TheConversation and my post there the effect of colour on our bodies and minds is the 7th most read article on TheConversation by anyone at the University of Leeds with about 170,000 reads. I am passionate about colour education and I am part of the colour literacy project.

Recently I had the idea to generate even better content that can educate about colour and to this end I started a patreon page. For some of this content I am charging a couple of dollars per month for access. But the idea is to generate some funds to allow the highest quality colour education material to be developed. That’s my dream anyway. If you would like to support me doing this – and also see the material that is being developed – please think about supporting me at the patreon website.

Whatever happens I will continue to keep this Colourchat resource free and will post here as often as I can.

Newton and Prisms

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What I love about colour is the fact that there is always something new to learn. Today I learned that the experiment with two prisms (often attributed to Newton) where he split white light with one prism and recombined it with a second (inverted) prism is not possible. There is a fantastic youtube video about this that shows that you need a lens between the two prisms to make this work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uucYGK_Ymp0

Virtual Fashion – the future’s not what it used to be

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Our current consumption of textiles is not sustainable. Perhaps one solution is better design of clothes to allow easier disassembly which could avoid discarded garments ending up in landfill. According to The Australasian Circular Textile Association 90% of textile waste ends up in landfill which is a shocking statistic. Or perhaps there will be a societal change leading to less emphasis on fast fashion. These are issues that we are exploring at the University of Leeds in our Future Fashion Factory. The Future Fashion Factory is a £5.4 million R&D partnership (led by the University of Leeds but including Huddersfield University and Royal College for Art) exploring and developing new digital and advanced textile technologies to boost the design of high-value creative products. The idea of leasing clothes rather than buying them is also gaining traction. Celebrities have long leased evening wear for red-carpet events. But could leasing become more mainstream?

Maybe the future of fashion is virtual. Perhaps in the future (in the near future actually) we will be able to change our clothes as easily as we change our backgrounds when taking part in video calls. Fashion is important and fulfils a desire that people have to express themselves. But perhaps people will increasingly use virtual environments to express themselves. Fortnite has already hosted several fashion shows and fashion is already an essential component of the hugely successful online game. For our children – the future consumers of this world – buying a virtual garment is as natural as buying a physical garment (and possibly more rewarding). The world of digital fashion was recently discussed in an interesting article in The Guardian by their fashion editor Hannah Marriott.

Our regular team on the Over The Rainbow colour podcast discussed these issues with Caroline Hemingray who leads the MA Fashion Marketing at the University of Leeds. You can listen to the podcast here – https://swestland.podbean.com/

Colour in Fashion

design, fashion, news, podcast, professional, psychology,

For our sixth episode of our colour podcast we chatted about colour in fashion covering colour forecasting and the future of fashion. We brought in a guest, Caroline Hemingray, who leads the MA in Fashion Marketing at the University of Leeds. It’s mainly for fun – and as an educational resource – but I hope you find it interesting. You can see the podcast here.

What colour does a red apple reflect?

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It might seem a strange question but this is a question I answered on quora today. You can read the full answer here. However, in short, it is not simply the red wavelengths. Below you can see the light reflected by a typical red object such as an apple.

You can see that the apple reflects quite broadly between about 550 and 600nm. That includes all of the wavelengths we associate with yellow and orange as well as red. The apple even reflects nearly 10% of the light at 400nm (which we normally associate with blue) that falls upon it.

Colour is complex. You need to understand stuff way beyond the spectrum of light to understand colour.

Colour on Instagram

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Recently I had the idea of trying to teach the basics of colour theory using Instagram.

The idea is to keep the messages really clear and simple and combine them with colourful imagery.

You can see this on my Instagram account @colourchat.

I was inspired to do this after watching what GothamChess was doing on Instagram to teach some simple – and not so simple – ideas about chess. Who would have thought it? From chess theory to colour theory.

2020 wasn’t all bad

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2020 was a depressing year in many ways for obvious reasons. However, I was still really proud of the four PhD students who graduated with me during this year.

Keith Findlater graduated with a PhD in high-dynamic range imaging, Sarah Hasbullah graduated with a PhD in colour for colour in fashion and body image, Jing Lin graduated with a PhD in the effect of coloured light on alertness and Jie Yang graduated with a PhD in colour and landscape images. It’s always exciting to see where graduated students go next. I already know that Sarah and Jie have academic positions and Keith has got a great job in medical imaging in the NHS.

You can see find publications from these students and others at my personal page at http://stephenwestland.co.uk/

Does Red Make the Heart Beat Faster?

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We had a lot of fun with our third colour podcast. We started off talking about the colour vision of unicorns and my co-presenter Huw put forward a very entertaining suggestion of what their colour vision would be like if they existed. We then explored the effect of colour and light on health. The effect of colour on heart rate and blood pressure is still contentious which is extraordinary, I think after all of these years that the scientific community has been studying colour. We also spoke about the role of colour and light on sleep. Sleep is really really important. Watching this TED talk by Matthew Walker about sleep might be the most important thing that you watch this year.