What Color Should I Paint My Baby's Room? | ParentData by Emily Oster

Hi Emily! I’m wondering if there is any data on babies and how they react to color. I’m an interior designer and often design children’s spaces. In college I took a color theory class, and my professor said that babies cry in yellow rooms more than any other color. Is that true? Are there certain colors that babies/children thrive in more than others? Thank you!
—Emily Tucker

I love this question. I have also heard this about yellow rooms, that they make babies cry and adults anxious. I think I once wrote a short story in high school about an anxiety-producing yellow kitchen. But was it data-driven? Let’s find out.

There is a very large literature on the color preferences of children, going back a long way. For example, we have this paper from 1922 that asked children to rank a set of six colors (they all liked blue). A larger study, in 1934, did the same thing but with more children. Older children liked blue, younger children liked red. By 1968, we were getting more into complex variation by age. Younger children prefer high-saturation colors (i.e. brighter, bolder) relative to older children. (Apropos of your particular question, I will note that yellow is unpopular in these studies; more on this below.)

Pantone paint color test charts. — Mika Baumeister

Children also have emotional reactions to colors (as do adults), with studies showing that bright colors promote more positive reactions than muted ones. These reactions have been studied in college students (see here), with green being the most relaxing color and green-yellow being the worst, due to its association with vomit.

In summary: color is extremely important in driving emotions, and people differ in their color preferences, both in general and on average across age groups. Of course, you probably learned all this in your color theory class, and you really want me to tell you about yellow and crying babies.

The source of this idea appears to be an individual named Carlton Wagner, from the Wagner Institute for Color Research. He has claimed (see, e.g., this Chicago Tribune article from 1992) that yellow makes babies cry and adults fight. He also said you should paint your dining room blue if you want to lose weight, because blue makes us “time conscious” and curbs your appetite. As far as I can tell, however, these claims are not based on any actual data. They are theories. Theories that took hold and now are holding us hostage to red nurseries (Wagner suggested color for baby’s room) and blue kitchens.

So, no, there is no data to support this. Thank you for the rabbit hole, though!