Look into the multicolored light!

September 30, 2015 7:10 PM

I'm looking for information on the psychological and physiological effects on humans of exposure to different colored light or an environment lit only by a single light color. There's a plethora of (poorly sourced) information about things like "color therapy" and (unsubstantiated) claims that "red light makes you angry" but virtually nothing that's backed up by any actual research or explanations of how it works.
posted by Socinus to Science & Nature (7 answers total)

Best answer: Here's at least an abstract from one study that explored this to some extent and found evidence for an effect.
posted by limeonaire at 8:54 PM on September 30, 2015

Here's a study that compared the effectiveness of blue vs. white light in light therapy treatments for seasonal affective disorder:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21276222
posted by ceebee at 9:05 PM on September 30, 2015

I'm really curious about this too, and hope others have better answers.

Depending on what sorts of effects you are interested in, you could look at studies done for industry. I toured a factory that had some areas lit in green, and some in red (photosensitive products, so the light was not merely greenish or reddish). I don't know of any specific sources, and while I would guess there is some data on accident rates and other things, no idea if that would be available to people outside of the company.
posted by yohko at 10:12 PM on September 30, 2015

Blue light is supposed to be more effective than white light at resetting your biological clock (source) - which is why it is allegedly a bad idea to get in front of an LED lit, blue tinged display when you are planning to get to sleep.

The field of Human Factors has performed a number of proper experiments on colour. Here and here are some quick summaries.
posted by rongorongo at 11:19 PM on September 30, 2015

Blue light may not do anything to prevent suicides at train stations.
posted by sebastienbailard at 11:54 PM on September 30, 2015

I have no way of tracking down the study he was referring to, but back in the mid-80's I had a psych teacher who briefly talked about the behavioral effects of various wall colors in some institutional setting with a captive population -- a prison, I think. It was a sidebar to the main topic that day and he didn't go into detail, but I remember his saying that pink walls 'made people kinda crazy' over the long term.
posted by jon1270 at 5:01 AM on October 1, 2015

the pink prison paper (schauss 79).
posted by andrewcooke at 6:30 AM on October 1, 2015 [1 favorite]