Trauma-Informed Color Palettes for Europe

The color wheel comes from here. Newton bent the spectrum into a circle in 1704, and 18th-century painting theory settled on red, yellow, and blue as the primaries.

Europe's older systems don't use it

Heraldry sorts colors by light and dark instead of by hue. Gold and silver on one side, red, blue, green, black, and purple on the other. Anything placed on a shield had to come from the opposite group: a gold lion on blue, never black on blue. The rule was written down by 1568, and it exists so a coat of arms stays identifiable at distance in poor light.

Russian has no word that covers all of blue. Light blue and dark blue are separate colors with separate names, the way English treats pink and red.

Hungarian has two words for red. Vörös comes from the word for blood and is used for blood, wine, hair, fire, and politics. Piros comes from the word for blush and is used for a red car, a red pen, a red apple. The two aren't reliably light and dark versions of each other, so using red in palettes for Hungary and surrounding countries would be tricky. 

 

Northern Europe

Western Europe

Central Europe

Eastern Europe

Keep reading

• Trauma-Informed Color Palettes for the Americas
• Using Color in Trauma-Informed Design