from Hacker News

Has the world become less colourful?

by rubenv on 7/28/22, 7:55 AM with 213 comments

by donkeyd on 7/28/22, 12:10 PM
I'm a man and I like colors. I have a red car, red shoes and colorful jackets. None of them are especially remarkable, they just have colors on them. I get remarks from colleagues about my shoes, I get remarks from random people on the street about my jacket. These people don't tend to be very positive about it, yet they feel the need to say something about my appearance, because I wear colorful stuff.
I feel like part of the movement towards grayscale is that people are afraid to stand out. I can always easily find my car in a parking lot, because it stands out. People can find me in a group, because I stand out. I'm glad I don't care too much about the opinions of other people, so I just wear what I want to and don't try to blend in. I also feel bad for people who don't wear what they'd like to because they're afraid to stand out, because you only get one lifetime.
I personally also hate that the already dreadful winter is made even more dreadful by everyone wearing dark clothing. Please all buy something colorful to wear next winter... It's safer too!
by pflenker on 7/28/22, 1:12 PM
I think that the conclusion this thread draws is wrong, because less overall colors make color accents stand out more. In other words: If everything pops out, nothing does.
Most of our furniture and walls are white, gray/stainless steel or black, and variations from it. Yet, we use color accents in most rooms, e.g. orange towels in the bathroom, or lilac bedclothes. So while our place confirms the overall trend, it does not support the conclusion, as it looks much more colorful than my parent's place, which resembles some of the pictures in that thread.
Another important aspect is that the color I like today is not the color I like tomorrow, so buying something with muted colors makes sense, especially for long-lived things like cars or kitchen interiors. It is much easier to change the color accents in a kitchen if you happen to fancy a redecoration that way.
And last but not least, it's easier to sell stuff like cars if it is not very colorful.
by chrismorgan on 7/28/22, 12:32 PM
I’ve spent quite a lot of time in India (mainly Hyderabad and Kolkata), and can report that India is much more colourful than Australia. Very garishly so, to my eyes. In clothing, building paint, night-time building lighting (… I found myself sometimes wishing coloured LEDs hadn’t been invented), just about everything imaginable. Weddings can be almost painful in the saturation of colour. But Indian cities are also extremely dusty, so that you only see the full extent of some of the colours in monsoon time when the rain washes it all away—especially the vibrant greens of foliage, which in other seasons often appear completely grey or slightly brown.
(Aside: I live in Victoria, down in the south east of Australia, and foliage colours are generally fairly muted. I’ve been in Darwin once, up in the northern tropical parts of Australia, and found it really weird to see eucalypts and such that clearly felt Australian to my eyes, but in the vibrant tropical greens that I associated (from experience) with Sri Lanka and parts of India.)
by thematrixturtle on 7/28/22, 9:48 AM
There is a famous if possibly apocryphal study where random people were asked to rate various toaster colors, and everybody swooned over lime green and hot pink and whatnot.
After they finished, they were told that as their prize they could take one of the toasters home -- and everybody chose white, stainless steel or black.
by defrost on 7/28/22, 8:32 AM
> Consider this study, which analysed the colour of everyday objects over time.
> Percentage of Pixels across all photos
Does anybody have a citation for "this study" ?
It's implicitly implied that it comes from some mega cloud storage of personal and professional photos, but it'd be nice to see the actual source and read the methodoloy.
ADDENDUM: Found it.
https://lab.sciencemuseum.org.uk/colour-shape-using-computer...
> This article analyses a selection of the Science Museum Group Collection. We examined over 7,000 photographs of objects from 21 categories. The categories were selected on the basis that they contained large numbers of everyday or familiar objects. These categories range from photographic technology to time measurement, lighting to printing and writing, and domestic appliances to navigation.
Hmmmmm.
by scyzoryk_xyz on 7/28/22, 2:52 PM
The graph presented in the source doesn’t quite give it off, but my dad, an industrial designer and professor, always mentioned how innovations in plastic, materials and manufacturing in the 1960-1980’s made everyone in his field just crazy for all the new colors and shapes that were suddenly possible.
I’m sure a lot of us can recall something similar in more recent niches like UI design. After a period of excitement with all the new possibilities comes a more sober minimalistic function-first approach.
I don’t think this is something to lament - color has become cheap and widely available so it has lost the meaning it had in the 60’s and earlier. If anything, we could be talking about a brief color-heavy time period that is just ending. One in which everything became unreasonably colorful thanks to unrestrained consumption and petro-chemical innovations.
by avar on 7/28/22, 10:25 AM
It's interesting to think about examples where we've been moving to a better world, or more rational choices based on these seemingly more boring color selections, or where external factors are driving them:
1. White as a car color is much more practical in any place that gets a lot of direct sun. In e.g. South Africa you might drive around all day and not see anything except white cars. In Western and Southern Europe their popularity is a rough approximation of summer heat and sunlight in the area.
2. These photographs are by-and-large leaving ignoring practicalities. Sure, a natural wooden wall is nice, but it also needs more maintenance to look like that than one that's painted white.
3. For kitchens boring colors are practically synonymous with an increase in durability and the ability to withstand water. It's easy to get stainless steel, or a white and black marble countertop, you can't paint stainless steel and still place a hot pan on it, a wooden countertop is going to be subject to rot over time, particularly with water ingress. Once you pick stainless steel or white/black for major surfaces others tend to follow.
by cplli on 7/28/22, 8:32 AM
Car colours is something that sometimes worries me, brighter colours are sold as 'extra', while greys are default/cheaper. This leads to some cars basically camouflaging with the road, especially at times like dawn or dusk. There are other colours that make it harder to spot a car depending on location/time-of-day, but from my experience greys and grey-navy-ish are the worst.
by Theodores on 7/28/22, 8:19 AM
Colour is not driven by fashion directly. There is always a technical innovation or regulatory change.
The Ford Focus pioneered a new 'silver' paint that was formulated differently to 'silver' paints that had gone on before. 'Silver' was no longer an expensive option, the base model had it. This proved popular and the trend was set, silver cars took over at the start of the century, using the new formula paint.
An example of regulatory change is food. In the 70's food coloring additives packed a vibrant punch. Decades later with many regulatory changes, those hot pink biscuits are now pinky grey. The palette has been toned down.
Although we have came a long way, many colours rely on elements that are quite toxic. We might have got rid of the lead, but cadmium? Cobalt? Take those out on the same basis and things get grey.
by kansface on 7/28/22, 3:59 PM
Quite a few just so stories in here - I mostly disagree with most in favor of my own:
We shed our colors because we lost the emotions expressed by those colors in our lexicon. We don’t put joy, awe, wonder, or whimsy on display. Those emotions aren’t just gone from our palette (walls, furniture, consumer products, cars, fridges), they are non-existent in and of themselves in society at large. Our Art is outrage, performative or otherwise. News is outrage. Media is outrage. Popular culture is outrage. If you aren’t outraged yourself, you are part of the problem (needs more (out)rage).
We will return to playful objects, playful colors and forms when it is once again permissible to express playfulness. We will return to joyous colors that express joy for joy’s sake when we have joy to express… see also the revival of mid-century modern as an implicit revival of the optimism of the 50s.
by mmmmpancakes on 7/28/22, 11:27 AM
If you are like me and love vibrant colours and struggle to understand the postmodern(?) obsession with drab palettes, I recommend the book Chromophobia by David Batchelor [1]. It contextualizes this phenomenon within broader western art history and is just generally super interesting to someone who has an interest in art and design but isn't embedded in that world. The main takeaway, iirc, is that this isn't a particularly new thing.
[1] <https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/351621.Chromophobia>
by lolsal on 7/28/22, 2:39 PM
Colors are trending towards the "may need to sell this kitchen/home/car/thing in the future, so I want to go with a non-offensive, maximally inclusive color for my potential buyers."
If you paint your house hot pink, you're probably not concerned about resale value for a long while.
by sharikous on 7/28/22, 12:15 PM
The quantitative results about "pixels" are, experimentally speaking, garbage. The do not prove the point even if it feels true. A more thorough analysis would be welcome, possibly with different geographical points. E.g. let's do that in Iran, Russia, Tanzania and a European country. Are there correlations with traditional culture? And with the current political system?
I myself have anecdotical accounts of this. It couples with decreasing personalization. Today even the desktop picture is seldom changed by the end user.
by arketyp on 7/28/22, 8:26 AM
Maybe because we have such rich color reproduction in screens we feel the need to have the rest of our surroundings take on a more neutral stance. In fact this reflects the screens such as they are "blank canvases" that take on whatever content deemed fit for the present purpose or mood.
by underdeserver on 7/28/22, 8:28 AM
I feel like it's a fashion thing - greyscale, metallic stuff looks sleeker and cleaner.
I hate it.
I'll take a 50s grandma's house any day over the cookie-cutter machined greyscale apartments I see everywhere today.
by theden on 7/28/22, 12:38 PM
A few reasons I can think of that may explain why:
* Older photos had more saturation
* Colour photography and screens were new and a novelty, so it was pushed more to showcase their tech's capabilities
* Muted or monochrome colours by companies became the norm and associated with class (e.g., old rainbow apple logo vs newer monochrome logos), too much colour may be seen as kitschy
* Perhaps tied to the postmodern era as a differentiator, bright vibrant colours on products are seen as retro and/or cheap
* Also maybe tied to capitalism, vehicles, houses etc. with safe colours are better when it comes time to sell. I believe mass production would also result in more neutral colours
* With the ubiquity of cameras, more images of banal environments exist now
by samsolomon on 7/28/22, 12:49 PM
To me there's something about the use of color that can become a bit overwhelming. I think it's less about color, but the amount of color and contrast that appears in a given area—perceived busyness. It's difficult to describe. I think it's less about trying to stand out and more about people picking things that they like individually, but may not work well together.
It's kind of like going to get ice cream and having them put every topping on it. Gummy bears and mint chocolate chips taste good on their own and in various combinations with other things. Not so much when they are together.
As a designer I'm probably more sensitive when it comes to color though.
by Borrible on 7/28/22, 1:07 PM
“Therefore in 1909 I announced one morning, without any previous warning, that in the future we were going to build only one model, that the model was going to “Model T,” and that the chassis would be exactly the same for all cars, and I remarked:
‘Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.’
I cannot say that any one agreed with me. The selling people could not of course see the advantages that a single model would bring about in production. More than that, they did not particularly care.”
Henry Ford in collaboration with Samuel Crowther in My Life and Work. 1922. Page 72
Beside, color is all in your mind. Out of it, it's just electromagnetic waves.
by nonrandomstring on 7/28/22, 9:07 AM
An explanation might be LED lighting.
Sunlight, candle-light and resistive filament lights (incandescent) have a broadband spectrum. Through most of history we've viewed the world lit by these sources.
Moving to fluorescent lights causes spectral quantisation as the frequencies are due to electronic band transitions in the gas. The phosphor absorbs and re-emits energy in different bands that fills out the spectrum but it's still really strange, with missing bits. When fluorescent lights first became popular people complained of headaches from the strange spectrum. They are disfavoured in certain industrial applications because they make some colours harder to see.
Semiconductor lighting is even worse in this regard. Radiative re-emission in valance holes emits line spectrums. Only by combining these do we trick the eye into seeing "white light". Recently we've got good at blending doping agents to give mixed spectrums that approximate daylight.
If these forms of electronic lighting have holes in their spectra, perhaps that's why an analysis of a corpus of photos shows a change in spectrum over time?
by Kiboneu on 7/28/22, 1:00 PM
Computer and phone interfaces tend to be very colorful. Sometimes a UI designer doesn’t know how to fit extra dimensions of information on screen, they encode that information in color, but it doesn’t always work. Colors are picked up by brands and coupled with unimportant information and identities, and we are forced to see this when when we go outside (in civilization).
All my displays are greyscale, and when I turn off the color filter I feel like I’m looking at a trash bin full of neon candy. My short term memory suffers (my theory is that I use color as a mnemonic for thinking, and in the mind: re-coloring is more demanding then coloring, and un-coloring seems impossible, given a complex virtual interface).
Maybe there’s a kind of color-based sensory exhaustion going on from an over-use of color for brand-related messaging and UI, which is subconsciously or unconsciously compensated by reducing the color of everyday objects.
by hbossy on 7/28/22, 9:48 AM
Quick check on Volkswagen site tells me that changing default silver to red on new Polo increases the price by about $656. That's just about the minimal wage where I live.
by matthewmacleod on 7/28/22, 8:36 AM
Maybe?
The headline graphic is from https://lab.sciencemuseum.org.uk/colour-shape-using-computer... which really tells us about the colour of a subset of objects in the Science Museum's collection – so a bit of a biased sample, and I'd wager primarily due to changes in materials.
There does seem to be maybe 20% more neutral-coloured cars since 1990, though. Interior design is probably the thing I'd most readily say has become more muted in my lifetime. I guess I'd say the world has become less saturated rather than less colourful.
by phil21 on 7/28/22, 11:40 AM
I've been commenting over the past year or two on the color of new cars recently. It seems "security contractor grey" of various shades is all the rage the past few years.
My pet theory is that car colors tend to reflect society's mood, and we've been in a dour one for some time.
by strogonoff on 7/28/22, 1:29 PM
The arrival of widely available colour film photography and subsequent pervasiveness of bland JPEG renders changed how humans perceive colour (and likely how they design with colour).
Until colour photography, humans didn’t really have a fixed shared anchor as to what the world looks like in general—including colours. All we had was words and paintings.
With consumer colour photography, suddenly it seems as if we have that anchor…
Except it’s not actually the case. Discarding the fact that our perception of colours and shapes is highly idiosyncratic and happens over time (never as a discrete standalone moment), there’s no medium that’s even remotely close to being capable of reproducing the vast dynamic ranges of scene-referred light values at exposure time (and in case of JPEG or film photography, that data is never available in the first place). What can be conveyed is the tiny range reproducible by screens, film or ink on paper—and unless you take charge of scene data interpretation with your favourite raw processing software, the conversion to that range is a result of camera or film manufacturer’s design.
…But even though there’s no true anchor, thinking your phone’s interpretation of reality is just that may be enough for this to be a self-fulfilling prophecy—after all, perception is a socio-psychological phenomenon. We may have used to have our own individual truths, but now it’s very common to believe that bland, sRGB-safe default capture interpretation by our camera or phone is the objective reality of what the world looks like (and anything else must be disclosed as “enhancement” or “processing”)—and it’s not easy for an individual to get rid of that notion if everyone around believes in it.
Even the author of tweets like this runs with the same fallacy, and appears to showcase film and digital captures (and even 3D renders?) side by side, even while those are artifacts of drastically different ways of interpreting scene data.
by rocqua on 7/28/22, 9:05 AM
I would argue the graph looking at pixels in photographs is probably more affected by smartphones than any societal trend. Because so many more pictures are taken with smartphones now, the colors produced by smartphones have an impact here. But probably a greater impact is the number of throw-away pictures that are taken and published now as opposed to before.
(Not to say that smartphones pictures are bad pictures, but to say that ease of taking pictures, and ease of publishing pictures, removes bariers to 'bad' pictures. Smartphones are probably also responsible for an absolute increase in the total number of good pictures)
by sebastianconcpt on 7/28/22, 10:06 AM
Fantastic. One thing that can be added is that since 2021, everything became 50 shades of purple.
And I mean annoyingly forced things that should never be that color.
Example: the other day I saw some youtube video of upcoming videogames and many of them have, somehow, parts of purple smoke in fire explosions, the engine exhaust of the Millenium Falcon going from its classic light blue to purplish, lights and shadows that do not match the natural environment forced to subtle purplish.
Not to mention the mandatory login screen of macOS Monterrey.
by tiborsaas on 7/28/22, 8:35 AM
Maybe this is why the Instagram article was a bit weird yesterday?
"On Tuesday morning, Instagram head Adam Mosseri appeared in full damage control mode. Facing the camera and wearing a bright yellow sweater, he attempted to quash a growing revolt from some of Instagram’s most prominent users."
https://archive.ph/FF2d1
Why even mention the color of the sweater? I can see that clearly on the video.
by Barrin92 on 7/28/22, 8:42 AM
reminded me immediately of a tweet about the recent season of Dexter (https://twitter.com/_katiestebbins_/status/14613483079013785...). When new TV shows air I can't avoid paying attention to colors now, this kind of 'Scandi-Noir' look for a lack of a better term has become super common.
by TimCTRL on 7/28/22, 8:33 AM
No wonder I find 80's movies, or 80's themed movies more aesthetically pleasing
by thoweriu34234 on 7/28/22, 8:23 AM
It's not just colours. The world rapidly turning into a real-life "borg-world": same kinds of buildings; same kinds of dresses; same kinds of "world models; same philosophies; and now the same language too.
The world is for all real purposes has been gobbled up by the Anglosphere. It's all but dead; I'm sure many people realize how drab and low-entropy our world is today.
by unsupp0rted on 7/28/22, 2:58 PM
Has the world become less colorful? Even if so, this isn't bad.
There's something to be said for a world which doesn't use colors except functionally.
* A red thing is red because it needs to be seen, like a STOP sign.
* A grey thing is grey because there's no need for it to be not grey.
I'm fine with either a creative colorful world or a functionally colorful world. Most of my stuff is grey. My glasses are purple, because it serves my interests right now for my face to be memorable.
In an urban survival situation, say, I'd want the reverse: "be the grey man" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcNWAgdQoaw)
by golergka on 7/28/22, 11:23 AM
Another explanation would be rising car sales in Middle East, Africa and other economically developing regions with very hot climate where white colored cars are simply more economical as they don't heat as much in the sun.
by wink on 7/29/22, 9:50 AM
The wood examples are disingenuous I think.
I'm close to 40 and everyone I know in my age group, where I grew up... their parents all had the same type of furniture with the same wood types. We all had the same colors in our kids' bedrooms. It was three types of local wood, and the odd outlier.
Surprise! When we grew up we didn't want our apartments to look like our parents set them up in the 80s or 90s. My living room is (faux) dark cherry, my bedframe + nightstands are (painted) dark wood, my kitchen is light beige.
by v4dok on 7/28/22, 5:58 PM
I mainly wear grayscale and maybe some beige. I like grayscale cars and appliances. Why? Simply because it's easier on the eye. I grew up in a colour overload and I'm very glad things become more neutral. I'm able to appreciate colour much more when it's not everywhere all the time.
Also, utility and convinience are much more increased with neutral colours. Clothes are easier to match, replace, wear again. Cars and appliances are easier to resell.
by hcarvalhoalves on 7/28/22, 1:45 PM
I've noticed, and absolutely hate that every furniture store or any new building today is basically white, grey and beige. I had to order my furniture custom-made because I wanted a blue sofa and yellow armchair and it's impossible to find, every furniture store used the same small variation of textiles.
I believe this trend was primarily driven by economies of scale, and over time it turned into a customer preference by the offer vs. demand paradox.
by ilaksh on 7/28/22, 10:50 PM
Amazing how most of the people in this thread are denying that trends exist or that they are influenced by them.
The thing about fashion though is that it's subconscious. You would not know it affected you unless you are very meta-cognizant in this particular way. ( Which people should educate and train themselves about subtle cognitive biases.)
by squarefoot on 7/28/22, 3:09 PM
A lot more products are now built by machines, therefore saving on something like buying more different paint or less time "wasted" to reconfigure the production line makes sense from a business point of view. Thankfully, the real world (sun, mountains, lakes, my shirts) is still colorful as before.
by HACKER501 on 7/28/22, 3:31 PM
Sometimes people shame of what there wearing colors or something else but you chose what you want! So everyone can wear be what he wants to be/wear. Its crazy if you think about it people dont like colors because of colors everything is possible. Its just like gravity. HACKER501.
by k2xl on 7/28/22, 11:28 AM
The study of colors seems to neglect that back before taking photos were ubiquitous, photographers would have a higher likelihood of taking photos of colorful, more interesting things (why waste a photo on something boring?)
Regarding cars however, this is likely due to costs of colorful paint as scale.
by MR4D on 7/28/22, 5:14 PM
Car colors certainly have gotten more bland:
https://www.thedrive.com/news/37001/this-graph-shows-how-car...
by ramesh31 on 7/28/22, 1:30 PM
Just look at what happened to McDonalds. Some soulless corporate design committee full of MFAs and MBAs decided that being iconic and unique was too "corny", and remade their brand into empty grey nothingness. A perfect analogy to what has happened with web design as well.
by Waterluvian on 7/28/22, 1:13 PM
It feels like “colourful” is being flatly accepted as the superior outcome. I’m not sure it is. It’s just different. And it’s style so it’ll come and go. Remember the iMac? Computers were never colourful. Then they were. They’re not really again. I imagine it’ll keep evolving.
by gnicholas on 7/28/22, 3:39 PM
Some car companies charge extra if you don’t want your vehicle in white/black/silver. I heard that Tesla charges $2k extra if you want a red Tesla. I think most are closer to $1k, which is still a pretty hefty charge for a purely aesthetic option.
by sk0g on 7/28/22, 2:37 PM
I think one possible reason is colours have become more plentiful, so it's harder to match now. If there's 4 blues to pick from, you're likely to be able to deck out your entire kitchen in matching hues. If there's 50 blues... good luck.
by pookha on 7/28/22, 1:29 PM
Took a trip to a former East German city in the early 00's. There were subdivisions and rows of identically colored battle ship gray homes. There huge gray burtalist buildings. Gray prisons. Gray schools. Had to have been a depressing way of life...
by folkrav on 7/28/22, 12:44 PM
For cars specifically, I have a theory it may be explained by a lot of people go for resale value. Feels more likely to find someone to buy a gray car than a bright green one.
by janmarsal on 7/28/22, 11:41 AM
Monopolies and the one size fits all mentality. The world has become more globalist and centralized and this is just one of the symptoms. I blame the central planners.
by mc32 on 7/28/22, 5:15 PM
There was a time when color was expensive, dyes, paints, etc. Ford famously only wanted black cars…
No. I think we’re living in a more colorful world because color is cheap.
by gwbas1c on 7/28/22, 1:29 PM
I used to love black cars, but they were only cool when most cars on the road weren't black. Now they're super-boring.
(I still like black cars, though.)
by clove on 7/28/22, 10:17 PM
I lived in South Korea, and - I shit you not - if you look at the cars on the road 99% of them are either black, white, or gray.
by ilrwbwrkhv on 7/28/22, 11:06 PM
UK is far more colourful than North America