When browsing through the web you will probably notice that one colour sticks out more than any other – that colour is blue. Go and Google something, then take a look at your Facebook news-feed, then go check out Twitter, now take a look at LinkedIn. you should notice a very obvious pattern, there is a lot of blue.
But why is blue the most popular colour?
According to research conducted by psychologists Stephen E. Palmer and Karen Schloss, a person’s favourite colour can be determined by averaging out how much that person likes all of the objects they associate with that colour – a bit of a mouthful but it makes sense. For example, if someone has a fond liking for money, grass and frogs; their favourite colour might be green.
If you think about something blue chances are it is something positive, so people naturally associate the colour blue with positive thoughts. It is difficult to think of something blue that is negative and if you can think of any they probably aren’t very blue. If someone asked you to think of 2 things that are blue the first things that would come to mind are water and the sky, these are 2 things you naturally like as water keeps you alive and the sky is nice to look at.
Why is blue used so much in design?
It is the ‘people’s favourite’ – As mentioned above, blue is the most popular colour in general so it only makes sense that is is popular when it comes to design.
The next darkest colour to black is blue – Why is this relevant? Blue has always been the default colour for a link but no one knows why or who made that decision. Mosaic, one of the earliest internet browsers, decided to make blue the default colour of links blue as it was the closest colour to black in its contrast to white, thus making it the most eligible colour choice for web pages.
Mark Zuckerberg is colour blind – Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, decided to make Facebook’s main colour blue because, well… it wasn’t really much of a choice. Mark is colourblind making him unable to see red or green and so blue is the only colour he can fully interpret. Due to Facebook being one of the most popular sites in the world it is no surprise that the trend of blue being a commonly used colour has stuck.
