A color scheme is a color or set of colors that will appear again and again in a painting, film sequence, group of characters, or videogame 3d world. It can be used to create coherency, as a way to identify things that relate to each other, and can be a part of a visual hook.

There are many ways to choose a color scheme:

• Based on Color Theory models (Complimentary colors, analogous colors, etc)
• The optical response of the human eye
• Natural colors based purely on the local color of real world objects

But another way to choose a color scheme is to understand that certain colors and combinations can trigger specific emotional responses, and so you try and chose the colors that will give you the emotional state you want from your viewer. The problem is that the associations or emotions certain colors communicate can vary depending on culture. This applies to far more than just color schemes, it can apply to architecture, shapes, clothing and any number of other aesthetic choices, but color is frequently attached to emotion in color theory books, so it's especially important to consider when designing your color scheme.

While an enormous subject of research, this tutorial tries to give you a few pointers on choosing colors based on their emotional impact, and how that changes based on factors such as culture.

Colors by Association

When creating a color scheme, the hope is to relate the colors you've chosen to something that means something to the audience. This can be something simple like direct visual association, like these 3 colors...

What do you think of when you see these colors? Maybe a formal business suit?

Therefor these 3 colors might be a good choice if you're trying to communicate the ideas of sophistication, classiness and power to the audience.

But these sorts of associations can go deeper, and colors can trigger certain emotions based on less specific associations. This is a worthy goal to achieve, but you also need to keep in mind that these associations may be very different depending on the culture of your intended audience.

While there are many exceptions to these rules, there are some large scale generalities that can be said about the association certain colors have as they relate to emotion and culture. Again, not everyone from a specific culture will directly find this to be true, but these general rules are some of the accepted norms in the worldwide art community.

"Lapis Lazuli". Since this was expensive to buy, it tended to be used for the most important part of the painting, which is why it was commonly used for the clothing of the Virgin Mary in religious paintings. This may be one reason the color blue in western culture is connected with trust and professionalism, as it signified trust in god and the church. Purple pigment was also expensive, another reason purple is associated with royalty.



In the United States, before the 1940s, pink was a male color, and blue was feminine. This is because blue was considered calm and pink was considered strong and passionate, playing into the gender stereotypes. After the 1940s, pink became a female color, and blue the male color. While there's no definitive answer as to why, some

was more neutral, which reflected the seriousness of uniforms of male military officers after years of war.



Blue can be considered a feminine color in china, with black for boys. So remember, as well as culture affecting color association, time is also a factor, different colors mean different things to

people in different eras.

Green is the traditional color of Islam and is associated with paradise. The color green is associated with Islam because it is believed to have been the Prophet Muhammad's favorite color.

As a practical example of using green in the West to represent Nature, in my book "The Story Of Inc", the color green was rarely used since the book took place in the desert. The only time green was used was to show a story point that the Citadel could produce plants and food that were not available to the desert folk.





I got this trick from the film Wall-e from Pixar, with the destroyed earth being all browns and the only green was the plant Wall-e finds and gives to Eve.

Pastels (desaturated colors) are frequently used for babies as a calming effect (please stop crying!!), but once the kids are a little older and starting to play with toys, you're more likely to use saturated primary colors to attract them to manipulate the objects and learn. Something to consider if making a property for babies or kids.



In the United States Of America, there are 2 major political parties, the Democrats and The Republicans. The color associated with the Democrats is blue who are more liberal, and red for the Republicans who are more conservative. But in general, Blue is considered a conservative color, representing calmness and professionalism. So why are these colors swapped in the American political system?

Prior to the 2000s, the colors are more what you'd expect, red for liberal and blue for conservative, which was more akin to the colors denoting the british political parties. The same with the Canadian political parties, blue was and still is conservative, and red is liberal.



But in the 2000s in the USA, the story goes that it was the first time an electoral map was shown on television, which used red for republicans and blue for democrats, and the system stuck after that. So why those colors? Nothing more than the choice of the graphics editor that Republican starts with "R" and so let's make them Red.



And finally one of the more famous examples of how culture can affect color choice. In the East the color white is reserved for Death, and so you'd never wear white to a wedding in the east. Instead Red is more likely to be chosen as the color of a wedding dress (Luck and Prosperity). In the west, white is more about purity, so a bride's wedding dress is more traditionally to be white.

Conclusion

• Who is your Target Audience? We learned about how different groups can have different color associations, so deciding on your target audience can let you make better choices. For example, if you're making a film that you expect will only be seen in North America, there are certain color schemes that are fine. But that same color scheme may mean something very different in other countries. The same for different age groups. So decide who is the audience is for what you're making, that will help inform your color choice.
• Coherency: Whatever scheme you do choose, use it consistently. If a bunch of characters in a film always wear red, people will naturally associate those characters together, forming a group in their mind. Be aware of this and use colors consistently to trigger this phenomenon and avoid the grouping effect when you don't want it.
  

This site is ©2025 by Neil Blevins, All rights are reserved.