The colors you surround yourself with play a significant role in influencing your mood. Colors are a lot like music; a peppy number can get you out of the dumps and grooving to the beats; similarly, bright and cheerful color has the power to lift your spirits and get your back on the happy wagon. What color your walls are might not seem like a big deal, especially if you are the workaholic type who barely stays home for the night. However, this pandemic has changed that perspective worldwide.

With the lockdown and the restrictions still in place, people have spent more hours looking at their walls than they would care to admit. It has brought a radical shift in how you perceive the colors you surround yourself with. Which colors you want to see day in and day out, and which ones you would rather avoid. The fashionable shades of black and grey are suddenly out of fashion, and the more earthy and warm shades of brown, green, and yellows are back at the forefront.

Which Colors Lost in the Pandemic?

Before looking at the colors that won during this pandemic, let's have a look at the color that has been shunned. The first and foremost thing about a pandemic is health. It makes you think about your health in a more concentrated manner. You want to eat healthily, think healthy, live healthily, and be surrounded by things that scream healthy. Unfortunately for most of the darker and colder shades like black, grey, silver, and blue, there is nothing about them that hints at health and wellness.

If you want to picture a pandemic in your house, then you will probably think of dark, dingy hallways in dull green, living rooms in blue, and a bedroom with dull peeling salmon pink. Nothing can be more depressing, which, unfortunately, is the whole focal point of a pandemic. Hence, it is no wonder that people are scrambling to redo their walls for the perfect work from home and a bunkered down a safe place from the dreaded coronavirus.

What Colors Are Trending?

Tuff and challenging times call for an added edge to keep you in high spirits. It can get emotionally upsetting to remain cooped up indoors and have to constantly worry about circumstances beyond your control. In this situation, having warm and affectionate tomes can temper that deep sense of anxiety and help you remain calm and cheerful. It is akin to being held close in a warm hug.

This trend has been captured by the popular home paints honcho Farrow & Ball. In their color trend report for 2021, the highlights and focus are on friendly and relatable tones like "Indian Yellow" and pink shades of "Dead Salmon." Other color brands have followed suit in their 2021 color highlights. Benjamin Moore has announced their lovely "Aegean Teal" as the color of the year, and Sherwin Williams has chosen the "Urban Bronze" from their "Sanctuary Palette" as the color of choice for 2021. The one thing in common in all these color tones is the warm, languid, and rich tones they have, which works wonders in uplifting your emotional spectrum.

Psychological Effects of Colors

Generally, people tend to brush aside the importance of colors on their mood. However, the recent times which has forced everybody indoors, leading to prolonged times surrounded by your house walls, have led insight into the role your house wall colors play in defining your moods.

Color is known to affect your moods and emotional strains. It is increasingly being used as a therapeutic tool for boosting mood, easing anxiety and restlessness. However, finding the right shade can be a difficult and arduous task. It requires a good amount of professional skill to find the right shade that will help you.

One of the easiest ways of taking advantage of the benefits of color therapy is by repainting your home and office walls. You can play with various aspects which are planning the redecoration. You can add a bit of fun with structured paints or go in for a nice nature wallpaper reminding you of beautiful sceneries or simply upgrade to a color block for your office space, which is known to boost productivity.

The Effect of Pandemic

The biggest effect of any pandemic is a change in perception. The coronavirus pandemic has made people worldwide appreciate the time spent at home. For the first time, people are spending time thinking about the changes they want to make in their interior decorations. The pattern is more introverted with more time staying indoors rather than out and about.

With the 2008 financial crisis, people started looking for colors that helped them relax and calm down the nerves. Colors were neutral and muted like pastels. The basic thought process at that time was to redo the walls in a shade that will help ease their anxiety and make it easier to sell the property if the need arose.

With the COVID 19 pandemic, the thought process is to repaint the walls in a shade that you can easily spend extended time with. So, you will not find many takers for the bright and splashy hues. The need of the hour for the majority is nice warm neutral pallets that are easy on the eyes and soothing to the soul. Colors that help boost productivity and relaxation.

What Makes the Home Makeover Difficult?

With people looking to makeover their homes to make them more inspiring and rejuvenating, the wall colors need to incorporate the following factors:

• Liveliness
• Productivity
• Revitalizing
• Soothing to eyes
• Invigorating
• Refreshing

These factors strike out the once-popular blacks, whites, and grays. They also take care of the formal, metal edges, chrome finish architectural looks. With houses doubling up as both homes and office spaces, you want a color that boosts both these spaces in a nice blend. So, you need to get your productive juices flowing, and you need a space to de-clutter your mind as well at the end of the day.

The concept has two different contradictory color schemes. These basic differences about the use of the house as a formal office space during the day and as a relaxing and unwind space during the after-hours is what makes it hard to choose the right décor and theme. You need a space that can be your office and be your home at the same time.

The Solution

The solution to the above dilemma is simpler than you would imagine. You just have to create different sections in your house for office and home use. A lot of people already have a designated office space in the house, but the majority, especially those struggling with low on space city living, struggle with this.

You just have to create an area or section of the house for our office use. This section needs to be colored:

• Bright and light
• Easy on the eyes
• Colors boosting efficiency

For the evening section of the house, you should concentrate on:

• Darker shades
• Deeper color tones
• Textured paints

This flow from the light and easy paints to darker, more complex tones make it easier for the human body to follow the natural pattern of day and night. The other parts of the house need to be in muted middle to neutral tones to make it easier to multitask. This gives your days an easy-to-follow structure that, in turn, allows you to stay attuned to the natural and relaxed state of consciousness.

Final Notes

At the end of the day, human needs and emotions are greatly attuned to their surroundings and circumstances. With the global pandemic wreaking havoc throughout 2020, there was an immense peak in the stress levels and anxiety quotient of one and all. This is the primary reason why everyone is looking for a sense of calmness from their exteriors. The senses are a window to your soul. It is these senses that are affected by the color themes. Warm, neutral, and in tune with nature are the clear-cut winners for 2021.