What color represents sadness and confusion?

Colors can evoke a range of emotions in people. While colors like yellow, orange, and red are often seen as exciting or energetic, colors like blue, green, and purple are viewed as calming and serene. When it comes to sadness and confusion, there are a few key colors that tend to represent these feelings. In this article, we’ll explore what colors are most associated with sadness and confusion, look at some psychological and cultural explanations for these connections, and provide examples of how these colors are used to represent these emotions.

Blue

One of the main colors associated with sadness is blue. There are a few potential reasons why blue evokes feelings of sadness:

Blue light has a calming effect – Studies show blue light can trigger the release of calming neurotransmitters, which can induce feelings of sadness.

Blue is associated with night – The darkness and loneliness of night can amplify feelings of sadness.
Cultural associations – In many cultures, blue symbolizes sadness. For example, feeling “blue” in English refers to feeling sad.

Blue is used extensively in cultural representations of sadness:

Picasso’s famous painting “The Old Guitarist” uses almost exclusively blue tones to convey the musician’s melancholy.
In movies and TV shows, a common visual cue for sadness is casting everything in a blue filter.
Emoji showing a frowning face shedding a blue tear are used to express sadness online.

So when people think of sadness, blue hues often come to mind thanks to their calming effect biologically and their strong cultural associations with sorrow.

Grey

Like blue, grey is also frequently associated with sadness. Some of the reasons grey can evoke sadness include:

Grey skies – Overcast, cloudy days can cause low moods.

Lack of vibrancy – Grey lacks the energy and brightness of other colors.
Loneliness – Grey can seem isolating.
Boredom – Grey can represent monotony and boredom, which can lead to sadness.

Culturally, grey imagery is used to convey depression or isolation:

In art and photography, greyscale images visually represent gloom and melancholy.
Characters going through depressive episodes on TV are sometimes shown in grey, washed-out scenes.

“Gray mood” is used as a metaphor for sadness.

Grey’s association with gloom, loneliness, and boredom trigger associations with sadness for many people.

Black

Black is the ultimate color associated with sadness in many cultures. Reasons black evokes sadness include:

Darkness – Black represents darkness, which can feel isolating and fearful.
Negative symbolism – Black symbolizes negative things like death, evil, and mystery in many cultures.
Emptiness – Black feels heavy and empty, like a void, which can induce sadness.

Grief – People wear black when they are grieving as a cultural tradition.

Some examples of black representing grief and loss include:

People dress in all black mourning clothes at funerals.

In art and media, scenes related to death, sorrow, or evil are often saturated in black.
Expressions like “black mood” equate black with depression.

Overall, black is consistently associated with sadness across cultures, likely because of its inherent darkness and its symbolic connections to negative events like death.

Purple

Like blue, purple is a cool tone that evokes introspection and melancholy for some. Reasons purple can represent sadness include:

Rarity – Purple’s association with royalty can indicate isolation.
Mysticism – Purple’s mystical connotations connect it to the mysteriousness of sadness.

Creative expression – Purple is tied to creative inclination, which is sometimes stereotyped as leading to emotional struggles.

In culture, purple symbolizes sadness in the following ways:

Purple rain is used as a metaphor for isolation and sorrow in Prince’s famous song.

Artists use purple hues to visually signal solemnity or thoughtful melancholy in their work.
In literature, purple prose – overly elaborate writing – is sometimes used to pointlessly evoke sadness.

So while purple may not instantly evoke sadness for everyone, its connections to isolation and introspection do relate it to feelings of sadness for some.

Green

While green is more associated with balance and growth, some also connect it to the sadness of envy. Reasons for this association include:

Green eyed monster – The idiom ties jealousy to green eyes.
Money – Green is the color of money in American culture, tying to financial envy.

Sickness – A green tinge to skin can indicate illness, connecting to feelings of inadequacy.

In culture, green represents envy-fueled sadness in expressions like:

“Green with envy” refers to jealous sadness.

The “green-eyed monster” symbolizes the envy from Shakespearean times.
Describing someone as “green around the gills” can connote sad jealousy.

However, while green is sometimes associated with the sadness of jealousy and envy, this connection is not quite as ubiquitous as the link between blue/grey/black and sadness in broader symbolic contexts.

Yellow

While yellow generally represents joy and energy, sickly or pale shades of yellow can evoke sadness instead. Reasons yellow may signal sadness include:

Illness – A yellowish hue to the skin or eyes can indicate sickness.
Fear – Pale yellow indicates fearfulness or cowardice, which relates to sadness.

Isolation – Faded yellow seems lonely and lifeless.

In culture, yellow connections to sadness include:

The Yellow Wallpaper – This famous Charlotte Perkins Gilman story uses yellow to represent madness and isolation.

Cowardice – The idiom “yellow-bellied” refers to being cowardly, which can relate to sadness.
Caution tape – Yellow tape as a warning evokes danger, caution, and gloom.

However, this connection depends on the exact shade of yellow – warmer, brighter yellows maintain more joyful connotations.

Colors Representing Confusion

So while the above colors frequently represent sadness, confusion has its own palette. Colors symbolic of confusion include:

Grey

Grey can represent confusion due to:

Lack of clarity – Grey obscures perceptions and clear delineations.

Undefined nature – Grey falls somewhere between black and white, evoking indecision.
Boredom – Boredom and monotony can breed mental fogginess.

Culturally, grey evokes confusion in sayings like:

“Grey area” refers to something ill-defined or ambiguous.
When situations are “unclear,” they are described as grey.
Tedium is referred to as “grey and dull.”

So grey is linked to perceptual and mental haziness.

Purple

Purple’s mystical, contradictory properties connect it to confusion:

Royalty vs Spirituality – Purple contains the energy of red and introspection of blue, evoking conflict.

Obscuring perception – Purple’s rarity in nature makes it seem artificial and obscure.
Complexity – Purple is formed by combining two primary colors, indicating complexity.

Culturally, purple can represent esoteric confusion:

“Purple haze” refers to psychedelic bewilderment from Jimi Hendrix’s song.
Purple prose again points to convoluted, pompous writing.
The Purple Rose of Cairo – The contradictory nature of this movie title and premise embodies purple confusion.

So purple’s paradoxical properties give it an aura of strangeness and mystification.

Brown

Brown’s earthy murkiness also lends itself to representing confusion:

Lack of sophistication – Brown’s simplicity provides little intellectual stimulation.

Unclear mixture – Brown combines other colors indistinctly, muddying them together.
Messiness – Brown evokes nature’s entropy – dirt, dust, feces – tying it to disorder.

Brown confusion is reflected in sayings like:

“Muddy the waters” means clouding something with confusion.
A “muddled mess” refers to an intellectually confused jumble.
“Brown study” indicates being lost in thought to the point of confusion.

Brown’s lack of clarity allows it to indicate a state of perplexity.

Green

Green isn’t inherently tied to confusion, but can represent it in certain contexts through:

Inexperience – Being “green” can mean being too new at something, causing confusion.

Envy – As mentioned, green can represent envy, which is an emotionally confusing state.
Alien nature – Green’s association with aliens evokes unfamiliarity and confusion.

Ways green symbolizes confusion include:

“Green around the gills” means confused in addition to envious.
The Green Lantern confuses his superpowers frequently as he learns to use them.
Little Green Men represent strange extraterrestrials that cause confusion.

So while green has many positive associations, it can relate to confusion in certain contexts.

Colors’ Cultural Associations with Emotions

As we’ve seen, colors have gained cultural symbolism connecting them to sadness, confusion, and other emotional states. But these associations are not inherently universal across all societies. Some examples:

White represents sadness in many Asian cultures, though Western cultures more associate white with purity.

Purple symbolizes death in some cultures, while it represents royalty in others.
Red indicates purity and celebration in India, while symbolizing danger in America.

This table summarizes how color associations can differ among cultures:

Color	Western Culture	Asian Culture
White	Purity	Death
Purple	Royalty	Death
Red	Danger	Purity

So while colors strongly evoke certain emotions, the specific associations vary across different cultural contexts. It’s important to understand how color symbolism differs around the world.

Conclusion

In summary, blue, grey, black, and purple are often connected to sadness, while grey, purple, brown, and green can represent confusion. These associations develop through:

Biological reactions to color wavelengths

Metaphors that equivalate color to emotion – feeling blue, green with envy
Use of color in art, media, and literature to convey mood
Cultural traditions and beliefs about what color represents

However, color associations ultimately depend on context and culture. A color that symbolizes grief in one society may indicate peace in another. But many correlations between color and emotion are fairly consistent, like blue and sadness. In the end, color psychology remains complex, subjective, and steeped in culture. But broad patterns emerge that reveal how colors like blue, black, and brown distinctly express human emotions.