Color symbolism

You’ve all seen the meme that slams English teachers and literary analysis.

Student: The green drapes symbolize….blah blah blah.

Writer: I just wanted green drapes.

Not every descriptor an author uses is symbolic. Often color only provides imagery—giving color to the scene, if you will. 

But sometimes color is important and relevant. Color can convey emotion, characterization, and cultural/religious/political significance that provides nuance, subtest, and emotions that we respond to on an instinctive and visceral level. 

 

Color is linked to a spectrum of emotions, and is fraught with ambiguity and duality, making it a vibrant way to:

1. foreshadow

2. reveal character

3. provide contextual depth

4. provide irony

 

Warm colors like yellow, red, and orange are considered stimulating.

 

Cool colors like blue, indigo, violet are soothing and peaceful.

 

Remember, Western and Eastern color symbolism is different.

 

Red suggests

passion and lust
anger and aggression
war and revolution
fire and flame

 

Yellow is

sun
gold (the metal )
enlightenment and wisdom
flowers and warmth
cowardliness
envy and treachery

 

Orange is

luxury and splendor
a renunciation of earthly pleasures—think Buddhist monks garb

 

Blue is

sky and infinity
the divine—the Egyptian god Amun and Hindu gods, Rama, Shive, and Krishna are blue
tranquility and reflection
intellect
depression
sexual proclivities. Example, blue movies
socio-economic status—from blue-collar to blue blood
In ancient Egypt, blue was the color of truth.
The Virgin Mary’s blue robe signifies her purity
Indigo is the color of the Third Eye of spiritual knowing and intuition

 

Green is

spring  and new life
fertility and nature
youth and inexperience
hope and joy
envy and jealousy and decay
recently connected with safeguarding our planet’s resources promoted by the Green Movement

 

Purple/Violet is

royalty and wealth
luxury
power—ancient Roman senators were identified by the purple stripe on their togas
religion—Catholic clergy don purple vestments during Advent and Lent

 

Pink

femininity
baby girls
gay pride

 

Black

evil
darkness
despair and death and mourning
mortality
secrecy
ill-fortune
disease

 

Gray

gloom
anonymity or inconspicuousness or namelessness
old age
uncertainty and unreliability and risk

 

White

purity and innocence
goodness
holiness
In China, Japan, and India, white is associated with death and mourning.
surrender and peace

 

How can you use color to strengthen plot, characterization, and conflict?

 

Does your character wear a red dress? What shade of red? Red—beyond the western symbolism of lust, power, and anger—doesn’t really tell a reader all that much—which is fine if that’s your intent.

But if you do want to add a symbolic punch here’s a few examples.

A rose-colored dress conveys ladylikeness or love
A cherry-red dress is suggestive of sexual prowess or desire, or…ahem…a woman wishing to be deflowered
An apple-red dress suggests something forbidden or idyllic
A blood-red dress…well, when you mix two symbolic words that can be a punch in the symbolic face!
A woman with ruby lips is sultry and/or high maintenance
A woman with candy-apple lips sounds like a damn good fun time

Consider how a fabric described as bone evokes a much different emotion than one described as snow.

 

Consider the following before using color symbolism

Genre: Sweet romance novels might use more romantic colors. For example, caramel—sweet and gooey, like love—instead of light brown. Historical fiction authors need to be mindful of using colors that didn’t exist. A lipstick-red dress won’t work if there was no lipstick back then. You’re better off using a descriptor like ruby, pomegranate, beet—colors aligned with the historical setting. 

Revealing character: Is your character a murderer? They might see their world in shades of viscera. A gardener or florist may see their world in the colors of blooms and flora. A chef or a woman on a diet might describe the world in shades of food.


Jewel tones convey preciousness, worth, royalty, or rarity.

There are city colors, desert colors, forest, and harvest colors. There are youthful and ‘old’ colors, fun colors, mysterious colors, clean colors, and dirty colors, evil and good colors.

 

So before writing the green drapes pause to consider why YOU wrote that color.

 

I love questions! Leave a comment here, tweet me at @AutumnBardot ( where you’ll get the quickest response), or hit me up on Goodreads! I’ve been teaching college-level literary analysis for 14 years, and enjoy helping new writers understand and incorporate all the tricks and techniques of the trade.