Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Color Psychology for Infants

We recently attended a baby care class for adoptive parents and the instructor mentioned that we shouldn't over stimulate a newborn with bright colors.  She suggested the we choose soft or muted colors in the nursery. Over stimulating a baby can cause them to be cranky.  I have a feeling that when the baby is cranky, that mom and dad will be too.  I guess that's why most infant items come in baby blue and baby pink. Personally, I like bright, bold colors and am not a fan of soft baby colors, so I started looking into color psychology.


What do you know, everything I wanted to know about color psychology has been pinned on Pinterest. Oh, how I love Pinterest.  I found an article from Creative Baby Nursery Rooms with a lot of good information.  There is warm color psychology that includes reds, oranges and yellows. A cool color psychology that includes blues and greens.  There is also psychology for neutral and black colors.



The Painters of Louisville had a great chart for the Psychology of Color.


We've been thinking about what we would want a nursery to look like. We both want it to be not too baby with a good mix of modern and vintage. The color psychology charts were helpful with deciding on a palette.  I found these really cool sheets from Skip Hop. The colors are muted and but still bright enough for me.  I think would work for a boy or a girl.  Love it!


I find it really interesting how color can make an impression on you.  If using a specific color can make a happier baby, then I am all in for giving it a try!  Something to think about the next time you are choosing a color.

courtesy of unitsstorage.com

2 comments:

  1. Actually, the blue and pink thing came about around the late 40s when the Kinsey report first showed that almost a quarter of men had had some form of same-sex sexual contact or experimentation. There was a collective, national, clenching of the sphincters, and everyone decided that the knee-length white cotton baby shirt that had been standard fare for boys and girls since the early 1800s was "confusing" baby boys about their sex roles. So kids clothing started coming in gender-specific cuts and colors. Pink was originally assigned to boys, being "warmer" and "more vital" and thought to suit their rambunctious natures since it was closer to red. Blue was assigned to girls because it would help chill out their hysteria and overly emotional womanliness. Different department stores warred over which color was assigned to which gender, and I forget the name of the store that prevailed, but ultimately, the pink wound up being the "girl color" and blue the "boy color". But that's really only in the last half century or so. Fun with colors!

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