What color should we paint the kitchen?
It’s not a question you’d ask your primary care physician, and yet, for interior designer and color psychology specialist Mehnaz Khan, it’s one that most certainly falls into the sphere of health and wellness.
In a design world that has been dominated by whites, neutrals, and grays in recent decades, Khan is an advocate for using color—almost as medicine. “Sometimes clients come to me wanting to do an all-gray interior, and I have to politely refuse,” she says. It’s not that Khan doesn’t think gray looks good—she refuses for health and safety reasons. Seriously.
“It’s a liability, because I know the emotional impact that it’s going to have in a few years,” she continues. “Gray shuts you down. Color is much more than a visual stimulus—when used thoughtfully, it can help create environments that support physical, mental, and emotional well-being.”
To some, this may sound far-fetched. But color psychology is something both scientists and marketers have been interested in for decades.
Remember the mid-aughts, when it was a revelation to learn that so many fast-food companies use red and yellow in their logos because the colors are known to stimulate appetite and hijack attention? That fun fact came from “Impact of Color on Marketing,” a popular paper that was published by a Canadian professor in 2006, but that cites research going back to the 1950s.
While there isn’t conclusive evidence that says certain colors definitely have particular psychological properties, per se, the research shows that color does indeed have an impact. Exactly what that impact is fluctuates depending on a person’s personality and background. In short, different colors might trigger different associations for different people.
Khan’s POV: If companies are using these principles to influence you to buy their products, why can’t a designer use them to influence you in other, more positive ways?
“I always first look at a client’s needs, their personality, lifestyle, and the purpose of the room,” Khan says of her design process. (Color psychology is so subjective, that she only works in residential homes where she’s designing for specific individuals.) “Your doctor wouldn’t prescribe two people with the same disease exactly the same thing—even if the medicine happens to be the same, the dosage or method would be tailored to each body.”
With this approach, Khan offers some free advice: Don’t run after trends. It bothers her to see people pushing a “color of the year” trend in design. “To me,” she says, “that’s like saying Vitamin C is the vitamin of the year.”
There was a time, before she was an interior designer, when Khan’s own home décor was all neutral, with white walls—a color she’d ended up with because it goes with everything. But in the long stretch of winter, “it was white outside the house and white inside the house,” says Khan, who has a master’s degree in computer science as well as an MBA. She took some time off from work to raise her kids, and that’s when she started painting—oils, abstracts, florals, Arabic calligraphy. It was the first year she didn’t experience seasonal depression, something she’d been dealing with for some time.
“I was struggling,” she says. “The home that was supposed to be my sanctuary ended up making me feel emotionally drained and physically unwell.”
But she realized colors were working for her. She started studying the psychology of color on her own time, diving into the research and “connecting the dots.” Now she’s a color psychology specialist and owner of Your Colorful Home Interiors, a full-service, Capital Region–based design firm.
“In today’s frivolous world, colors seem like something just to make things beautiful,” Khan says. “But have you ever entered a space, and you don’t know why, but you feel anxious or angry there?” Khan remembers a time she had to take a loved one to a hospital clinic that was covered in that soul-crushing gray. “By the time we left,” she says, “I was physically sick.”
Deployed with care, Khan says, color can be a tool you use to shape your home and lifestyle. “By using color consciously in your surroundings, you can set up your house for joy, or calm,” she says. For example, if you want to inspire yourself to remember to be patient with your family, choose colors that make you feel calm and serene. And know that you don’t have to pick one color palette for your entire house.
“The actions and activities that happen in each room are different, so the color palette of each room is going to be different,” she says. The kitchen, Khan continues, is a place for physical activity. It’s not about intellect and mental activity—it’s chopping, cutting, washing, using your hands. It’s physical and emotional. The bedroom is for relaxing. The office depends on the type of work you do.
Wondering what color you should paint your living room? Well, Khan will have to get to know you before she can answer that.