Whether you’re upcycling your furniture or adding a lick of paint to your walls, colour is at the heart of any painting project. More broadly, it’s central to the way we experience and enjoy life – from art and fashion to the emotions we feel when we see different colours.
And nobody loves colour more than the team at Frenchic!
With that in mind, it’s no surprise that there are so many great quotes about colour. From artists and designers to singers and philosophers, colour has been the subject matter for so many influential people.
Read on as we look at 100 quotes about colour, including specific shades and the entire spectrum…
Quotes about colour
“You create your own decoration. You choose your colour, you choose your mood…. If you are depressed, you put some bright yellow and suddenly you are happy.” – Philippe Starck
“Travel to exotic places informs me as a designer as to pattern, colour, and texture usually expressed in local crafts.” – Richard Mishaan
“Tonal and subtle colour combinations allow us to mix furniture and pieces from different eras together to create a cohesive narrative.” – Rafael de Cárdenas
“From the primitive crafts I discover to the changing colours of the sand dunes of Namibia as the day progresses, the constant awareness while traveling brings more depth and a broader colour palette to design.” – Vicente Wolf
“Colour! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.” – Paul Gauguin
"Colour is a power which directly influences the soul." – Wassily Kandinksy
"I am a believer that colour affects people's moods." – Lilly Pulitzer
"If one could only catch that true colour of nature – the very thought of it drives me mad." – Andrew Wyeth
"I found I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn't say any other way." – Georgia O’Keeffe
"The best colour in the whole world is the one that looks good on you." – Coco Chanel
"There's a reason we don't see the world in black and white." – Celerie Kemble
"Colour helps to express light—not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist's brain." – Henri Matisse
"With colour one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft." – Henri Matisse
"You think it's one colour but it's not. Closer and closer the folds appear not a deeper blue grey but a heavier one and finally just inches above the trees it's a small bright seam full of smoke, not really bright but allowing the day as much as it needs." – Eileen Myles
"You can never judge a paint hue by the liquid colour in the paint pot. You must apply it to the wall, wait for the paint to dry, then decide." – Dorothy Draper
"I sense a scream passing through nature. I painted... the clouds as actual blood. The colour shrieked." – Edvard Munch
"If we were to imagine an orange on the blue side or violet on the yellow side, it would give us the same impression as a north wind coming from southwest." – Ludwig Wittgenstein
“Life is a train of moods like a string of beads and as we pass through them they prove to be many-coloured lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of colour to express myself more forcefully... To express the love of two lovers by the marriage of two complementary colours... To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a dark background. To express hope by some star. Someone's passion by the radiance of the setting sun." – Vincent van Gogh
"Nature rarer uses yellow than any other hue. Saves she all of that for sunsets prodigal of blue spending scarlet, like a woman yellow she affords only scantly and selectly like a lover's words." – Emily Dickinson
“All colours are the friends of their neighbours and the lovers of their opposites.” – Marc Chagall
“Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else – by colour.” – Paul Cezanne
“Colour creates, enhances, changes, reveals and establishes the mood of the painting.” – Kiff Holland
“Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.” ― Wassily Kandinsky
“The chief function of colour should be to serve expression.” – Henri Matisse
“Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.” – Oscar Wilde
“Colours, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.” – Pablo Picasso
“All colours arouse specific associative ideas…” – Yves Klein
“I prefer living in colour.” – David Hockney
“Colours speak all languages.” – Joseph Addison
“If light is the spiritual quality of painting, colour is surely its heart and passion.” – Robert Reynolds
“There is a logic of colours, and it is with this alone, and not with the logic of the brain, that the painter should conform.” – Paul Cezanne
“He who wishes to become a master of colour must see, feel, and experience each individual colour in its endless combinations with all other colours.” – Johannes Itten
“In order to change a colour it is enough to change the colour of its background.” – Michel Eugene Chevreul
“Why do two colours, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this?” – Pablo Picasso
“The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colours contrast; but there are also colours contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.” – Voltaire
“You make different colours by combining those colours that already exist.” – Herbie Hancock
“Each colour is applied to the canvas in relation to the colours next to it. The painting becomes a living thing and calls out for the colour it wants.” – Neil Patterson
“The more an object is polished or brilliant, the less you see its own colour and the more it becomes a mirror reflecting the colour of its surroundings.” – Eugene Delacroix
“Colour could give rise to sensations which would interfere with our conception of space.” – Georges Braque
“Beauty without colour seems somehow to belong to another world.” – Murasaki Shikibu
“Colour is only beautiful when it means something.” – Robert Henri
“Colour does not add a pleasant quality to design – it reinforces it.” – Pierre Bonnard
“Colour can overwhelm… One must understand that when it comes to colour, ‘less’ is often ‘more’ – lesson taught us by the masters but ignored by many artists.” – Joe Singer
“You put down one colour and it calls for an answer. You have to look at it like a melody.” – Romare Bearden
“The colours live a remarkable life of their own after they have been applied to the canvas.” – Edvard Munch
“Colour… thinks by itself, independently of the object it clothes.” – Charles Baudelaire
“Colour is like cooking. The cook puts in more or less salt, that’s the difference!” – Josef Albers
“Life is about using the whole box of crayons.” – RuPaul
“I never met a colour I didn’t like.” – Dale Chihuly
“Colour in certain places has the great value of making the outlines and structural planes seem more energetic.” – Antoni Gaudi
“A dominant colour possesses tremendous power in making a painting unique.” – Mary Bassi
“A colour is as strong as the impression it creates.” – Ivan Albright
“Each colour has its own beauty and individuality, which you may accept or reject.” – Joen Wolfrom
“The point is to know how to use the colours, the choice of which is, when all's said and done, a matter of habit.” – Claude Monet
“No small dabs of colour - you want plenty of paint to paint with.” – John Singer Sargent
“If I could find anything blacker than black, I’d use it.” – J.M.W. Turner
“There is no blue without yellow and without orange, and if you put in blue, then you must put in yellow, and orange too, mustn’t you?” – Vincent van Gogh
“Listen to the colour of your dreams.” – The Beatles
“In nature, light creates the colour. In the picture, colour creates the light.” – Hans Hofmann
“There are no lines in nature. Only areas of colour, one against another.r” – Eduard Manet
“Suffice it to say that black and white are also colours… for their simultaneous contrast is as striking as that of green and red, for instance.” – Vincent van Gogh
“White is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. God paints in many colours; but he never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when he paints in white.” – G. K. Chesterton
“Red is the ultimate cure for sadness.” – Bill Blass
“There is a shade of red for every woman.” – Audrey Hepburn
“Everything utilitarian needs a little red edge.” – Reno Dakota
“A yellow room gives you perpetual sunshine.” – Steve Hovland
“If you take an intense colour and put an intense complement next to it without greying it, it’s very hot. The grey allows the eye to do the visual mixing” – Simmie Knox
“Grey is great. People think grey is a neutral, but I think it's such a moody, intense, dramatic and sexy colour. It's very sleek.” – Bryan Batt
“Pink isn't just a colour, it's an attitude!” – Miley Cyrus
“There’s something about black. You feel hidden away in it.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
“Blue is the only colour which maintains its own character in all its tones… it will always stay blue; whereas yellow is blackened in its shades, and fades away when lightened; red when darkened becomes brown, and diluted with white is no longer red, but another colour – pink.” – Raoul Dufy
“Never use pure white. It doesn’t exist in nature.” – Aldro T. Hibbard
"They'll sell you thousands of greens. Veronese green and emerald green and cadmium green and any sort of green you like. But that particular green, never.” – Pablo Picasso
“It is wonderful how much depends upon the relations of black and white... A black and white, if properly balanced, suggests colour.” – Winslow Homer
“When I haven’t any blue, I use red.” – Pablo Picasso
“Golden is a surface colour.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein
“Yellow is capable of charming God.” – Vincent van Gogh
“Yellow wakes me up in the morning. Yellow gets me on the bike every day. Yellow has taught me the true meaning of sacrifice. Yellow makes me suffer. Yellow is the reason I am here.” – Lance Armstrong
“Beige is atmosphere. It’s bisque, it’s ivory, it’s cream, it’s stone, it’s toast, it’s cappuccino. It’s well, it’s magic.” – Albert Hadley
"Remember, green's your colour. You are spring." – Gwendolyn Brooks
“A thimble of red is redder than a bucketful.” – Henri Matisse
“Red protects itself. No colour is as territorial. It stakes a claim, is on the alert against the spectrum.” – Derek Jarman
“If one says ‘red’ – the name of colour – and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.” – Josef Albers
“Painters use red like spice.” – Derek Jarman
“Pink is the navy blue of India.” – Diana Vreeland
“Orange is the happiest colour.” – Frank Sinatra
“If love were a colour, it’d be orange. Not because that’s a romantic colour, but because it’s the sweetest.” – Jarod Kintz
“How wonderful yellow is. It stands for the sun.” – Vincent van Gogh
“Green is the prime colour of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.” – Pedro Calderon de la Barca
“Blue colour is everlastingly appointed by the deity to be a source of delight.” – John Ruskin
“Never has a pigment been better named than ultramarine blue. Fashionable, even today, in its nomenclature! It is ultra in every way.” – Karen Fitzgerald
“All the other colours are just colours, but purple seems to have a soul. Purple is not just a noun and an adjective, but also a verb. When you look at it, it’s looking back at you.” – Uniek Swain
“I fell in love with black. It contained all colour. It wasn’t a negation of colour. Black is the most aristocratic colour of all. You can be quiet, and it contains the whole thing.” – Louise Nevelson
“Black is like a broken vessel, which is deprived of the capacity to contain anything.” – Leonardo da Vinci
“Black is a real sensation, even if it is produced by entire absence of light. The sensation of black is distinctly different from the lack of all sensation.” – Hermann von Helmhoz
“Working in white makes people look into it. White is ethereal. There’s a purity to it. It makes things look elevated in a way. There’s a whole palette of white.” – Jonathan Milne
“If time were a colour, I bet it would be a tasteful off-white.” – Greg Parrish
“Renoir said once that nothing was so difficult, and at the same time so exciting to paint, as white on white.” – Ambroise Vollard
“Better grey than garishness.” – Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
Find your perfect colour
Feeling inspired by all of our quotes about colour? At Frenchic, we offer easy-to-apply, durable, low-VOC chalk paint in a full spectrum of shades to add a splash of colour to your furniture or your walls. From vibrant reds and blues to a beautiful array of neutral tones, you can always find the perfect colour for your next upcycling or decorating project.
