Welcome to the Color Corner
Color surrounds us, quietly shaping the way we feel, move, and inhabit our homes. It is more than paint on a wall or fabric on a sofa — it is a living thread that connects mood, light, and life. In the Color Corner, we explore not only the shades we choose but the journey of color itself: where it came from, how it was discovered, and how it evolved into the endless spectrum we live with today.
A Brief Journey Through Color
Long before pigments were sold in tubes or mixed in factories, color lived in the earth, the sky, and the plants around us. Ancient humans ground ochres and clays, crushed minerals, and extracted dyes from roots and flowers to leave marks on cave walls. These early colors were not decoration; they were communication, expression, and story. Over centuries, as pigments were traded across continents, colors carried meaning, value, and symbolism. Lapis lazuli became ultramarine, prized above gold, while indigo traveled oceans and vermilion and carmine brought vibrant life into art and interiors. Each shade held significance beyond its beauty, whispering stories across time and space.
With the advent of chemistry in the nineteenth century, the possibilities of color multiplied almost endlessly. What began as earth tones and plant extracts evolved into thousands of variations, each with subtle shifts in hue, saturation, and lightness. Today, a single shade can transform a room depending on the light, the materials surrounding it, or the time of day. A soft green in the morning sun feels alive and awake, while the same green in a quiet evening corner becomes serene and contemplative. Color is never static; it is a living, breathing companion to our moods and our spaces.
Take a moment in your own home to notice the shades around you. Which colors greet you in the morning and which ones invite rest in the evening? Some corners glow with warmth you barely realized, while others whisper calm in quiet shadows. Color is both historical and immediate, intimate and universal — a language we all speak, consciously or not, and one that has the power to transform the way we live.
The reflections here in the Color Corner continue on my social channels, where quick observations, micro-palette explorations, and visual fragments bring these ideas to life in daily moments. Each post is a doorway to noticing the shades that shape your home, your mood, and your experience of the spaces you inhabit.
The Rainbow and Its Colors
The rainbow is one of nature’s most enduring symbols, a bridge between light and perception. It is born when sunlight passes through water droplets, bending and reflecting to reveal the spectrum hidden within white light. The sequence of colors — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet — is not random; it follows a precise order determined by the physics of light and the wavelength of each color.
Red appears first, occupying the longest wavelength in visible light. It is followed by orange, a gentle shift toward warmth, then yellow, capturing the brightness of sunlight. Green stands in the middle of the spectrum, where the human eye is most sensitive, bridging the warm tones above with the cooler ones that follow. Blue comes next, cooling and expansive, before indigo and violet close the arc with shorter wavelengths, carrying a sense of depth and subtle intensity.
Historically, the rainbow has fascinated humans for millennia. Ancient civilizations saw it as a symbol of connection, promise, or divine presence. Isaac Newton famously studied the phenomenon, passing light through a prism to separate it into its constituent colors. He named seven distinct hues, influenced as much by philosophical ideas as by observation, cementing the sequence we recognize today.
Each color in the rainbow has its own wavelength, energy, and character. Red stretches from roughly 620 to 750 nanometers, while violet occupies the other end, around 380 to 450 nanometers. The transition between each hue is continuous, a gradient of light that the human eye interprets as discrete colors, creating the familiar arc in the sky.
The rainbow reminds us that color is both scientific and perceptual. It is an interplay of light, physics, and human observation — a natural spectrum that has inspired art, science, and culture across centuries. Understanding the sequence of colors in the rainbow allows us to see not only the beauty of the phenomenon but also the underlying order that governs how light and color interact in the world around us.
