Lately, I’ve been craving a little more color in my world. If you look through my pins on Pinterest or my saves on Instagram, you’ll find a world of colorful interiors. Open the door to my apartment, however, and you’ll find a pretty limited palette of white, black, neutrals, and some touches of blue.
Research shows that color makes us happy. How exactly it does is still a mystery, and you’ll find conflicting advice from various studies that try to explain how specific colors make us feel. When I interviewed Ingrid Fetell Lee, the author of Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness last year, she shared a study that found that we tend to feel happiest in a place that provides a medium range of stimulation—an idea which struck a chord with me. According to the study, a neutral environment quickly becomes very unstimulating; bolder colors start off as more stimulating, but will even out to that medium level of stimulation that will bring us more lasting joy.