Can Colors Affect Your Health?

If you've ever noticed that certain colors tend to have an impact on your mood and mental health, you're not alone. It's not uncommon for people to feel more cheerful when they're wearing their favorite color (via Verywell Mind). This is because different colors can have different psychological effects on you and elicit certain emotional responses.

While further research is still needed, color psychology suggests that colors can influence your mood and evoke specific emotions. "This theory is grounded in the idea that our clothes can impact our feelings and behaviors, and therefore the colors that we wear can influence our mood," Lee Chambers, an environmental psychologist in the United Kingdom, told Real Simple.

For instance, multiple studies suggest that the color red appears to boost confidence while increasing aggressiveness and competitiveness in both humans and animals. In addition, brighter colors like yellow are often associated with happiness and playfulness, while darker colors like black and gray tend to be associated with sadness.

What is color therapy?

Some psychologists use color therapy to help treat certain mental health disorders, like depression (via Healthline). Also known as chromotherapy, color therapy is an alternative therapy that uses color and light to improve both physical and mental health. This can be done by physically looking at particular colors, or by using a lamp or night light to reflect colored lights off of your body while you sleep.

While this alternative medicine technique may seem like a relatively new phenomenon due to its sudden surge in popularity in recent years, historical records indicate that the practice actually dates all the way back to ancient China, Egypt, Greece, and India. However, little research has been conducted on the impact of color therapy, since it is still a relatively new field of study in the medical world. As a result, there isn't enough scientific evidence to confirm whether or not color therapy can actually treat or improve mental health.