Light and Colour: Mood and Mind

Let’s say I gave you a choice between two weeks of sunny, cheerful days and two weeks of dull, grey, and gloomy ones. Would you jump at the chance for dull, grey, and gloomy?

Me neither. But what is it that makes us go for sunshine and colour over greyness and dullness? Why are we cheerier with bright colours, gloomy with greyness?

Guanajuato houses (Photo: P Newman)

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I am currently pinching myself to have the good fortune to be in central Mexico at 2,200 metres (7,200 feet) elevation, looking down at Guanajuato, a small, sunlit city that is splashed with colour. In Cloudy With a Chance of Northern Lights I described its houses painted in shades of blue, green, yellow and pink. They look like playful splatters on the hillsides. Pink, fuchsia, and purple bougainvillea spreads luxuriously over yellow-painted walls.

The colours vibrate energy and light.

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Subdued-serene, or grey and grim?

Back home in more northern climes, neighbourhood houses tend to blend in with the same muted palette. Rather than standing out, making a statement, usually they seem to want to fit in with each other. And most public buildings are in shades of brown or grey. The effect is a serene, subdued look.

We’re lucky if we see an occasional “pop” of colour, an accent.

Worse than subdued is grey-grim. In the days of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, communist governments built hulking apartment blocks in the Brutalist architecture style. They used loads of stark, grey concrete. Even the photos feel like a form of optical oppression.

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Where colour is everywhere

Mexican underpass (Photo: P Newman)

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In contrast, colour is everywhere in Mexico. Food and markets, blouses, and streets are suffused with it. The other day I was riding on a bus in Morelia, a lovely city in central Mexico. We passed beneath an elevated expressway whose concrete supports had been painted over with bright yellow, blue, and green. There were even orange and pink ones. I am trying to imagine this happening in the US or Canada underneath a downtown expressway. I mentioned this to my wife. She said my proposal would create two years of public consultations and debate.

I was undeterred. After we cheer up grey, concrete expressways with colour, why stop there? Think of the thousands of dull brown and grey public buildings in American and Canadian cities that we could Mexicanize. For starters, I suggested to my wife that all the grey and brown stone city halls across the continent would be less depressing when painted orange and blue. Imagine grey concrete court buildings tarted up in cheery yellow and pink. Or maybe even in the rainbow of the gay flag. (Imagine if we could do that, at least for Pride Week.) Think about it.

My wife said she thought I going off the rails, and had better get back to my medical stories.

Guanajuato kitchen (Photo: Peter Newman)

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Do we in northern countries prefer moderation and neutral colours because we are overly wired, too keyed up, and need our environments to be calming? Maybe that serene look fits with an ethos of calm, sobriety, levelheadedness. Perhaps—and here I cheerfully go out on a limb of conjecture, without data or science to support me on this fragile limb—perhaps, compared to populations in the global South, we in the First-world North as a whole tend to be more cautious, and value moderation?

But why do we have to make things so drab? Are we a drab people?

Whatever the reason, Mexicans, in contrast, have a wonderful sense of colour. My theory is that colours are bolder in Mexico because they reflect a more social, outgoing society.

Winter blues-and-blahs

There’s no question that sunlight—and its absence—affects our mood. Those of us who have long months of greyness in northern climes know all about  the “winter  blues” or “blahs”. Some people get a more serious depression, seasonal affective disorder. It couldn’t possibly have a better acronym: SAD.

Therapy for depression has come a long way. In “More Medical Flip-Flops”, I wrote about lobotomies for depression. Nowadays, we treat seasonal affective disorder in a variety of ways. In addition to antidepressant medication and counselling, we sometimes prescribe bright artificial light to replace the diminished sunshine.

Light cheers us up, even if it’s only from a lamp.

The magic of colour

Add some colour and it’s like the sun bursting through a summer storm. Following four months of grey, overcast skies in Ontario, the writer Alison Wearing posted: “A few days ago, I went out for a walk and came back with an armful of colourful tulips. I couldn't tell you how many people smiled at my bouquet as I bounced along the sidewalk, and it made me realize how starved for colour we all are.”

Why does a drab look go along with a dreary mood? I started with a dictionary and the italics are mine. Grey: “Without interest or character; dull and nondescript; Lacking in cheer; gloomy.”

Sunny: “Cheerful; optimistic, as in a sunny disposition.”

We know deep inside, intuitively, that yellow and orange are sunny and cheering. When I began my first medical practice, in Vancouver, I wanted a cheery atmosphere in my examination rooms. So I wallpapered my first exam room in an effervescent yet soothing ochre, a yellow pattern. I wallpapered the second in a buoyant pattern of light orange. I thought the colours would help my patients who were anxious, worried, or morose. I don’t know if the colours helped them much. But during long, stressful days of medical practice they sure kept my mood up.

Table Setting, Mexico (photo: @2024 betsy pinover schiff)

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Sunlight brings out the colours around us. And visual colour brings out our inner colour, lifting our energy and mood.

So maybe I’m not off the rails, after all. Time to start painting all those grey and gloomy public buildings, concrete highway underpasses.

Mexicans are onto something real.

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To see other posts on Peter’s Substack: Musings on Medicine and More, click here.