We have a brand new house and one of my favorite rooms in the house is the living room or as we call it the "great room".  This room is awesome because it is simple, clean, and quiet.  The kids generally don’t go in there to play or hang out so it stays quite tidy.  My husband and I will sometimes go in this nice quiet, calm, room to talk and discuss life.  Little did I know that the effect of the wall color could be having a tremendous effect on our discussions.

According to How Decorating Colors Affect Your Mood, by Kathy Burns-Millyard, "the colors you choose for decorating can have a very strong influence on the mood that room creates." This would invariably explain how the most recent discussion my husband and I were having turned into a very heated argument. My great room is painted Red!  Evidently, the color red can get people very talkative, excited and even sometimes angry and aggressive. That explains a few things.

By being selective in the colors you choose for your rooms you can influence how people will react in those rooms.  For example, the color blue generally creates a very calming, relaxed feel, which is a real response; physical and psychological.  Green is said to generate a feeling of wealth and jealousy. Red is a good color for the intent purpose of stimulating conversation and an appetite.  Yellow is one of those "happy" colors that seem to make people feel good no matter how it is used and in the same sense orange is a vibrant, warm color too but has been known to cause headaches depending on the hue.

Suffice it to say that before you paint take time to stop and think about the way you want people to feel in that room and explore some colors that might help create that mood. Unfortunately, my great room is now known as the "fight" room and I don’t even want to go in there to talk anymore but a nice shade of blue might just be the answer.