Trauma-Informed Color Palettes for the Middle East and North Africa

The Middle East and North Africa, or “MENA,” is an academic grouping rather than a cultural one.

It includes Arabic, Amazigh, Turkish, Persian, Kurdish, Hebrew, Coptic, Aramaic, and Nubian language communities, and Sunni, Shia, Christian, Jewish, Druze, Yazidi, and Zoroastrian traditions. It stretches from the Atlantic coast of Morocco to the Iranian plateau, across mountain ranges, deserts, fertile valleys, and coasts. What these places do share is a history of color that traveled by trade, which moved the same dyes and pigments through the same markets for a thousand years: indigo, henna, saffron, madder, lapis.

Color organized by light, not by hue

Arabic is the most widely spoken language across this area, and its classical form approached color less through a spectrum of distinct hues than through the behavior of light: brightness, intensity, and contrast. A striking example is the word jawn, which could mean either deep black or brilliant white, based on how intensely a surface reflects light. Modern Arabic has since expanded its lexicon to separate hue from brightness but the old way shows up in architecture built to play with light and shadow, and it lives on in a vocabulary where color is shorthand for personal character and social honor.

Specific meanings of colors in this region

Green is tied to spiritual and dynastic collective memory here. It also represents vegetation, which is scarce across much of the landscape. Between the two, it is rarely the low-stakes calming color it is in Western practice.

Indigo represents protection across much of the region. The Tuareg, whose indigo-dyed clothing tints the skin and earned them the name “Blue Men,” are one example. In Palestine, indigo was believed to turn away the evil eye and was used for coats in the Galilee and dresses in the south; the dye also had enough value to function as wealth.

While khaki is a low-stakes neutral in the United States, across much of this region it means military uniforms, checkpoints, conscription, and occupation. I haven't eliminated light tans entirely, but I leaned instead into reddish browns, metallic and mineral grays, and limestone and gypsum whites as the calming neutrals.

Five regions

I split the region into 5 sub-regions primarily based on natural ecosystems because most of the palettes are derived, at least partially, from natural settings. A rough approximation of the countries in each sub-region are listed below.   

• The Maghreb & Amazigh North Africa — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania.
• The Nile Valley & Nubia — Egypt and Sudan
• The Levant & Mesopotamia — Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Cyprus.
• The Arabian Peninsula — Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE.
• Anatolia & the Iranian Plateau — Turkey and Iran.

The Maghreb & Amazigh North Africa

The Nile Valley & Nubia

The Levant & Mesopotamia

The Arabian Peninsula

Anatolia & the Iranian Plateau

Keep reading

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