How to Choose a Color

What color should you paint your room?

The reasonable answer is any color will work. The room will still be a room regardless of hue. These words are easy to say when you are not the one who must choose, but someone must choose a color, and at some point this may be you.

You will realize right off the bat that no matter what is decided, it will always be a little disappointing. You will always wish that there was another secret, undiscovered color that no one has ever used, not yellow, not orange, not red, not violet, not blue, not green, not in-between, not a shade, not a tint, something beyond the color wheel, yet with a paint swatch conveniently hiding somewhere in Home Depot for you to find, which an associate will be able to mix for you, piece of cake. They just happen to get the new color in. Then, and only then, will you be happy with the color.

You therefore must accept the depressing reality that there is no best color that actually exists, only a least worst one. The least worst color is what we mortals are left to choose. How do you decide what is least worst? There are no definitive answers, but there are general guidelines. If the color reminds you of one specific thing, its not the least worst. If the color reminds you of nothing at all, that is not the least worst either. It has to remind you of numerous things—vague, hazy things. But not too much! You don’t want to be overpowered with associations, you want to be gently caressed by them.

Another strategy to be employed is to imagine how you will feel about the decision to paint a certain color. This will weed out any colors that feel disappointing, exciting, boring, nauseating, alarming, tiresome, intellectual, emotional, loud, soft, serene, agitating, confident, or insecure.

You will limit the decision down to only colors that create a mystified, clarified or curious feeling inside you.

Finally you will ask which colors would you feel disappointed if you didn’t try.

Using these methods, you winnow the field down to two colors, and that is when the fun begins. While initially there were many potentialities, complexities, and subtleties, the reduction to a binary choice ushers in a new dynamic.

As a teenager I had a job as a sailing instructor. I instructed children at a camp that had many activities besides sailing: swimming, scouting, archery, arts and crafts, kayaking, and probably some other stuff I forgot about. There was a new director hired at one point, with new ideas. The new director decreed that for two weeks, the camp would shut down normal activities and be divided into two teams. The teams would compete against each other all day long in all sorts of games. They called this, and I’m not joking, “Color Wars”.

The kids were generally into it. Some got a little too it into it. A few became so frenzied that they resorted to hostage taking, and one poor kid spent the overnight hog tied with duct tape in the other team’s tent.

In the camp example, the teams were the “Red Team”, and the “Blue Team”. In your case, the teams will be whatever the final two color choices are. “Team Flamingo Sneeze”, and “Team Orangutan Tan” for example. You may or may not happen to be a camp director, but one way or another you will need to find a sufficiently large number of youths to stage a proper Color War.

Once the Color War begins, it won’t take long for some Lord of the Flies bullshit to unfold. When it does, you must pay close attention. What color was the victim’s tent? What color were the perpetrators’ hats? While none of this will tell you what color to choose, staging a color war of this nature will surely inspire you to hurry up and make a decision before things get any further out of hand.

And that is how to choose a color.