Bringing Color Back Into Our Lives

Because it would be awkward, I’m not going to ask you to raise your hand if the following statements are true but visualize each of these situations to see if you can relate:

1. You grew up with kitchen appliances that were a variety of colors, but likely avocado green or banana yellow were present during all your meals.
2. You can envision a pink or rose-colored bathtub with a matching sink and toilet and maybe even coordinating bathroom tiles, rugs and toilet seat covers at your own house or your great aunt and uncle’s home.
3. Not only was the carpet in your family room fluffy or shaggy, but may have been orange or brown or a combination of the two colors from wall-to-wall
4. Couches and love seats were likely floral at one point in your childhood, only seen through the plastic sheeting to protect it for generations. At some point, that couch gave way to a plaid, flannel print with large wood accents for the armrests and along the back that was nearly indestructible.
5. And sitting out in the driveway, vehicles spanned every color of the rainbow and perhaps even had a multi-color stripe across the hood or down the side panels.

Now think about your kitchen, your living room, your vehicle today and consider what colors you find these days. Most likely, the images in your head range from white to gray to black. Maybe throw in a stainless steel appliance but it’s still a variation of gray. 

Even what should be one of the most colorful areas of your home - a children’s bedroom - has now been relegated to shades of gray. While soft, muted tones for the walls and bedding can be calming and restful, toys that are just various shades of gray or beige don’t stimulate a young child’s imagination and creativity. 

This shift toward a gray palette isn’t just a vague concept. Research and data back it up. We literally have less color around us.

For example, paint color for cars has shifted dramatically over the past 30 years.

In 1996, grayscale colors (silver, gray, black and white) accounted for 47.3 percent of the automotive color palette. In 2025, grayscale colors represented 80.4 percent of new vehicle’s paint jobs. 

This means, other colors diminished or outright disappeared from automobile paint options. Blue dropped only slightly from 10.2% in 1996 to 9.1% in 2025. But red dipped from 20.1% to 7.0% and green nosedived from 13.4% to 2.2%. 

In just three decades, we have fewer color choices when purchasing a vehicle. We’ve all been in that situation where we are wandering a parking lot looking for our car with no other distinguishable vehicles to serve as a marker. 

Again, don’t raise your hand, but all of us have likely mistakenly tried to get into someone else’s vehicle, thinking it was our own car, followed by looking around to see if anyone saw our error.

While my family owns a very distinctive orange mini-van, I drive an indistinguishable gray mini-van. We call it our bank-robbing vehicle because we could rob a bank, drive it around the block and we would look like every other van on the road. 

There are many reasons why our world has shifted toward such a gray palette. Those colors are what is being offered on new vehicles because that has been decided by car manufacturers, which in turn take their cues from what people want. 

Shades of beige and gray dominate children’s bedroom because studies have shown that softer hues calm a child so parents follow those recommendations. 

And studies show certain colors trigger eating or lack of appetite, certain colors affect restlessness or aid in sleeping and certain colors are safer on the road to be seen or not seen by others. 

But with this shift toward a less diverse color palette in so many areas of our lives, we are missing out on the creativity and stimulation that a diverse range of colors brings to us every day. I think that is why the rise of murals and artwork in our communities is becoming more prevalent. It is a simple way to bring color throughout our day. 

So don’t be afraid to buy that coral SUV even though everyone will know when you are at the grocery store. Don’t be scared away from painting your kitchen whatever shade of blue or green if that is what you like. And maybe it is time to drag that plaid orange/yellow/brown couch from your basement back into your living room. After all, it’s probably still in perfect condition.