Black is a primary color across all models of color space. In Western culture, it is considered a negative color and usually symbolizes death, grief, or evil but also depression.
Variations of purple convey different meanings: Light purples are light-hearted, floral, and romantic. The dark shades are more intellectual and dignified. The negative meanings of purple are decadence, conceit, and pomposity. Purple is also a color of mourning.
To this day, we think of purple as the color of royalty and luxury. Consequently, it brings up a feeling of trust and reliability. Purple's rarity also gives it an air of mystery. It's associated with creativity and the realm of fantasy — think about how many times magic gets portrayed as purple in popular culture.
Cones are the cells in the eyes that see color. If you stare at one color for too long, they fatigue. Until they recover, it's a common optical illusion to see the opposite color on the color wheel. So, staring at yellow for too long can make you see purple.
For instance, light purples are associated with light-hearted, romantic energies, while darker shades can represent sadness and frustration. In some parts of Europe, purple is associated with death and mourning.
Purple as a favorite color is said to represent an artistic and unique individual, who is often very intuitive and deeply interested in spirituality. Lovers of purple are said to be a good judge of character, and a visionary with a great need to participate in humanitarian issues.
Purple as a color in the Bible represents wealth or royalty. Purple dye was made from the blood of tiny sea snails from the Mediterranean Sea. Wearing purple symbolizes royalty, grandeur, independence, wisdom, devotion, extravagance, pride, and creativity, just to mention a few.
The wavelength of violet is 400 nanometers making it the smallest–and strongest–of all colors. This may explain why purple is associated with supernatural energy. Purple is also associated with magic, mystery, spirituality, creativity, dignity and royalty.
In the early days of colour film, the technical limitations meant that only certain colours showed up strongly on the screen. This created the convention of the Disney villain being purple. The same goes for printing, comics were printed with a limited colour palette and once again purple was picked for the bad guys.
In many cultures, black is thought to be unlucky and black cats, in particular, are said to bring bad luck to anyone that crosses their path. In China, white is generally seen as unlucky, while Brazil and Thailand consider purple to be a colour that can bring about misfortune to anyone who uses it outside of a funeral.
People tend to associate red with negative, danger-bearing emotions. This could be because it is the color of fire, blood, and sometimes of poisonous or dangerous animals.
Purple is said to represent transformation. Purple is the color of royalty because of its association with the colored clothing of ancient monarchs and their relatives. Purple is the most powerful visible wavelength out of all of the colors in the rainbow.
In 1989 the United States National Recovery Month, September, was founded and a new color – Purple – was selected as the recovery movement's official color. Today, the color purple has expanded its reach to include the addiction recovery movement.
Purple: Fear
Fear, represented by purple, is a mix of blue and red and carries properties of the two, notions that can even conflict: power and apathy, bravery and fear. It is also a symbol of piety and faith, honor and nobility. Other common associations are: royalty, wealth, spirituality, penitence, and mourning.
The 3 Colors of Ministry presents a holistic approach to identifying and developing your spiritual gifts. It is based on the three dimensions of God's nature, for which the author has chosen the colors of green, red and blue.
Purple was a kingly color, and the soldiers mockingly put this robe on Jesus Christ because He had claimed to be the king of the Jews. Of course, in reality He is much more than that—He is the “King of kings, and Lord of lords” (1 Timothy 6:15; Revelation 19:16). See more images of Easter—and their meanings—here.
Likewise, the Veil in the Temple that tore at Jesus' crucifixion had the same color scheme: Blue for sky was the color for deity; red for the red Judean hills was the color for mankind. Being blended to purple represented the God-Man who, by his death, became the Door, our only Access to the Father.
Purple Color Psychology
In color psychology, purple is a royal color. The color meaning for purple is connected to power, nobility, luxury, wisdom, and spirituality. But avoid using the color too much as it can cause feelings of frustration. Some perceive its overuse as arrogant.
Like the many other heart emoji such as Red Heart ❤️ and Blue Heart ?, the Purple Heart emoji ? is generally used to convey love and other strong, affectionate, positive feelings.
Cross-cultural differences were (a) Poles connected anger, envy, and jealousy also with purple; (b) Germans associated envy and jealousy with yellow; and (c) Americans associated envy with black, green, and red, but for the Russians it was black, purple, and yellow.
The color red was most associated with anger, green with disgust, black with fear, yellow with happiness, blue with sadness, and bright with surprise.
Yellow, the lightest hue of the spectrum, signifies joy, happiness, betrayal, optimism, caution, idealism, imagination, hope, sunshine, summer, gold, philosophy, dishonesty, cowardice, jealousy, covetousness, deceit, illness, hazard and friendship.
The color purple stimulates the brain activity used in problem solving, while also being a feminine and romantic color.
Red is the most powerful color amongst all. It has a tendency to stimulate mind and attract attention.