COLORS | The meaning of purple in color psychology

What’s the meaning of color purple? What emotions are associated with the color purple?

Purple is a fascinating and rare colour in nature – for this reason, in the history purple has always been considered a sacred color.

The colour purple has also been often associated with royalty, richness and wealth, because purple dye was very expensive to been produced. Especially in the Western cultures, purple is the colour of royalty – you can often spot violet and purple in modern movies for example, for the cloaks and robes of kings and queens.

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Purple

in colour psychology

As a consequence, in color psychology purple is strictly related with feelings of power, nobility, luxury and ambition. For its rarity, it conveys wealth and a bit of extravagance.

The colour has also a variety of good effects on the mind and body, including uplifting spirits and calming the mind and nerves.

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Other meanings of the colors purple and violet

First, we should highlight the difference between the two colors – violet and purple. Violet appears in the visible light spectrum ( remember the Pantone ultraviolet color of the year 2018? ) whereas purple is the mix between red and blue.

However, violet is closely associated with purple. In fact, although violet is not quite as intense as purple, its essence is very similar.

Both violet and purple combine the spirituality and integrity of blue with the energy and strength of red. This conveys a powerful energy, the union of body and soul with a balance between physical and spiritual energies.

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Furthermore, purple and violet represent the future, a space for imagination and for dreams. It comes as no surprise that violet and purple are conducive to the practice of meditation, often associated with these worlds. The colour violet relates to the ‘fantasy world’ and a ‘need to escape from the practicalities of life.’ Nowadays, the ‘daydreamer escaping from reality’ concept can be also strictly related to the gaming, not to mention the expanding popularity of the metaverse and rising artistic community in the digital space with expanding architecture designs in the metaverse.

So with no surprise a purple color, to be precise a periwinkle blue – called Very Peri – was chosen to represent the future, and chosen as Pantone color of the year 2022.