Trauma-Informed Color Palettes for the Americas

Mainstream design across the Americas uses what is called "traditional color theory," which comes from 18th-century European painting: red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors.

Colors sit on a wheel that shows how they mix and which pairs contrast most. Black and white sit outside it, at opposite ends of a light-to-dark scale. Printers use cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMYK); screens use red, green, and blue (RGB).

Vision science describes a different set of primaries: the eye pairs red against green, blue against yellow, and black against white.

Latin America and the Caribbean Purple and lavender carry associations with funerals, grief, and solemn religious seasons across the Catholic Americas — Mexico, Brazil, and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean alike. Treat this as a caution rather than a rule. For a grief or bereavement practice, purple is arguably the most appropriate choice available; for a general practice, choose it knowingly.

Mexico shares the Catholic association of purple with mourning and Lent that runs through Latin America. Marigold orange belongs to the dead, and rosa mexicano reads as national pride rather than sweetness.

Indigenous systems assign colors to places

Maya assigns a color to four directions and to the center: red east, white north, black west, yellow south, blue-green center. Red and black stand opposed — sunrise against sunset, birth against the underworld.

Cherokee assigns a color to each of seven directions, and each direction a season: red east and spring, blue north and winter, black west and autumn, white south and summer, plus yellow above, brown below, green center.

Diné (Navajo) assigns four, one to each sacred mountain: white east, blue south, yellow west, black north. In the language, one word covers both blue and green.

U.S. & Canada

Mexico & Central America

South America

Caribbean

Keep reading

• Using Color in Trauma-Informed Design