Working With Color | Hour 1

Updating your home is it is critically important and yet so difficult, and that is the concept and the use of color. Color. Color. You would think, all right, Dean, all right, color fine, Yeah, they're all around us. But if you've ever tried to do some thing very very special with your home, if you've ever tried to you know, like you're at the paint store or at the paint department at the big box store and you're thinking, all right, I'm standing in front of this huge board, and these

colors look really good. You get them home, you put them up on your wall. The samples don't look the same as they did in the store. Maybe you bought the sample pint of paint and you roll it around a little bit and you're like, WHOA, where did all that green come from? Why is it so pink? Yeah? Color, Color is a tricky thing, and I'm going to give you I'm going to lead you along this morning and give you some tips, some critical tips on how to get control of the world of color in your life.

What are complementary colors? What's a color wheel. I'm going to introduce you to a tool that we used about a ninety nine dollars tool that could literally save your life and your project when it comes to color. And I'm going to show you some things about color from

the science things. Now we're not going to nerd out on science, but from the science side of things that really you should know so that you can better determine how color fits into your world and to your home, into every single wall of every single room, because it keeps changing. But I'm not going to get ahead of myself right now. I'm also going to let you know, of course, we're going to take your calls and our

number to reach us eight three three two. Ask Dean eight three three the numeral two ask Dean eight three three to ask Dean. It's just that easy. The phone lines are open now and there is room for you on this warm, sunny Mother's Day Sunday morning here in southern California. Let me introduce our awesome team. Elmer is on the board. Good morning, Elmer.

you need to know. Yes, that's Lucky the rooster in the background. I don't know.

set out for you, a very important show. You wouldn't think that color is as tricky as it is until you actually need to get something exactly right in your home, and then you realize, holy cow, what is going on with color? And why does it behave the way that it behaves? Am I insane? Did we just? Was there something wrong with me when I was at the paint store and I picked out these things? Because when we got them home and they're just it's just wrong and

it's chained. I'm gonna explain to you exactly why that happens and how you can avoid it. We're talking color this morning, and we will do it right after.

Then you can book an in home design consult with us. Just go to house Whisperer dot Design, house Whisperer dot Design. I'm going to give the number out one more time. We're taking calls in a bit as we do. Eight three to three two. Ask Dean eight three three the numeral two. Ask Dean eight three three two Ask Dean. It's just that easy, all right, Let us dive in. It's all around us at all times. Yet it remains one of the least understood and single most difficult design

challenges for most people. That is getting the color right now. I know, I know, I know your nightmares. I've stood in your shoes. All you wanted to do was freshen up the living room, so you innocently hopped into the car head down to the paint store. Next thing you know, you're standing paralyzed in front of a twenty foot long wall of color samples. Behind you, the kid who pushes the buttons to mix your paint last week she was

working at Forever twenty one. Although she knows how to operate that paint machine, she has received received exactly zero hours of color theory training, and therefore all tomate is of no real help to you except when you're ready to buy and you're completely overwhelmed. Even if you have a decorator who suggested a triad of colors for you, how do you know they're right? Do you even know what a colored triad is? Do you have one? Do

you want one? Is there a way to check? You're beginning to feel just a little nauseous now you're seriously tempted to bolt out of there and give up on the update, but you press on. You grab a few samples which seem, you know, eh, kind of good, and then you head home, only to discover when you walk them into the room itself yeah, yeah, they don't look good at all. And that was a long process to get to something that you don't like. Now Here is

the good news. Human beings can discern over ten million colors and almost three million distinct hues of color ten million that you know what, we've We've got pretty decent eyes when it comes to colors. The bad news none of those capabilities stopped you from using too much green in the family room and picking the wrong white for the kitchen. Right, So it's time for a crash course in color and more important, color theory. And you know it's not going to get all sticky and academic. I

promise you we never do that. Right. Here's my promise to you. Color is power, And if you heed the simple advice which will roll off my lips to you, you will not only master the art of color design for your home, but you'll literally alter the moods and the emotions. Dare I say the happiness quotion of all those who dwell therein your home? Okay? Does that sound good?

just don't. I want you to understand this. The colors which we perceive as human beings, are our brains way of interpreting different wavelengths of light. Okay, what exists are wavelengths of light. That's what exists in the physical universe. We can read them, we can track them, we can monitor them, we can measure them. Okay, how those wavelengths of light enter our eyeballs and the way that our brain has evolved to distinguish between certain ways wavelengths of light.

I guess in one sense, since we can do math, right, we human beings are capable of doing math. Otherwise, you know, we wouldn't be able to balance our checking accounts. It's in theoretical that those wavelengths of light, like the way they hit a computer sensor, just result in different numbers in our head, different digits of numbers, and that you wouldn't actually be seeing color. You'd be seeing like instead of green, you'd be seeing like nine point two seven zero,

you know something like that. Right, So that's what I mean by color is something that's actually in our head. It's our brain's way of interpreting a wavelength of light. Okay. And the phrase as humans here very important because other animals' brains can interpret the exact same light wavelength differently for their own evolutionary purposes. Right. We know this to be true. So the lesson here being this color is

a perception. It's not an absolute, which explains why it's so fickle and it's so changeable because not only is color about your brain's way of trying to interpret different wavelengths of light, but also there are a lot of wavelengths of light out there. Okay. One wavelength of light coming off of something that we perceive to be orange, okay,

registers in our brain. When if it's a pure wavelength, meaning that there aren't any other wavelengths around it, twisting into it, mixing with it, then we get to perceive pure orange. But but but we put that wavelength and we put it into kind of a wavelength soup in which there are other colors next to it, next to that orange, near that orange, that are entering your eye at the same time as the orange wavelength. And guess

what happens. The orange wavelength changes. It's not that the light wavelength has changed, it's that the way you perceive that orange changes, because now it's a mixed bag. And so the orange starts turning maybe a little bit more red, or maybe it starts turning a bit more yellow, or maybe it starts turning more gray. It's a bizarre thing. But if we start mixing wavelengths of light in our eye at the same time, which is almost always the case.

In fact, it's hardly ever the case when you're just staring at one color and no other color wavelengths are entering your eyes. Therefore, colors change. They change. They change as the wavelength patterns of light change. Inside a room, they change as you look from one wall to the next wall. They change as the sun comes up in the morning and is low in the sky and then is overhead in the sky and nice and bright, and then starts to set in a soft golden hue. It

changes the colors on the walls in your room. It changes again, when you turn on artificial lights which throw out their own wavelengths, are you getting my vibe here? Your brain interprets wavelengths of light as color, and when there are multiple wavelengths hitting at different angles, at different frequencies, at different measurements and intensities, colors change. They change. And this is why you wrestle with color so much. Now, the big question is can we overcome it and how

do we get around it? Well, the answer is yes, but there are some specific things that we have to do in order to make sure that the color we pick is the color we want. And we'll start talking about that right after.

ish temperatures for this week ahead, I believe. But today, you know, stay in the shade, enjoy the outdoors, Enjoy mom, Celebrate mom. Hope you've got good plans today for that. Right now here on the program, we're talking about color and all the hassles that color brings to us and how to overcome them. In just a bit, by the way, just a bit, we're going to be going to the phones.

There's room on the board for you, so you get to whenever I go to calls, regardless of what the show is about, you get to pick the agenda for the call. Anything at all you want to talk about today about your home, whether it is outside, inside, construction, diy design, architecture, you name it. Let's put our heads together. We'll figure it out together. The number to reach me eight three three two. Ask Dean eight three three the numeral two ask Dean. Matt and Nikki are standing by.

They are ready to take your call. They'll tell you everything you need to know. Popy into and listen to the show while you wait, and then hopefully you and I will put our heads together and we'll figure it out all right. Back to color. We've talked about what color is. It's a it's a weird it's a weird thing. Color is the way that our brains interpret frequencies different wavelengths of light, right, And there are a lot of

frequencies and wavelengths built into certain color patterns that we see. Now. Most of you remember from what was it science in school that you know, you take a prism, and you can take white light, pure white light, and refract it through a prism, and you get the entire rainbow. Right. It's a beautiful thing. That's what's known as the color spectrum.

That's an important thing because what that prism is doing is it's breaking apart those wavelengths into separate wavelengths of different lengths, and as a result, our brain perceives that rainbow of fruit flavors that comes through a prism from white light, because white light, pure white light, contains all of those wavelengths and as a result, if you break

them apart, you get the rainbow. Black. On the other hand, pure black or darkness is the absence of any wavelength of light approaching our eyes, and so our brain simply in turn puts it as a void, as a non thing. Okay, is black a color? Well, in practical terms, if we're talking about you know, adding things. In fact, Elmer and I were talking before the show. You know that he's painted part of his apartment black. So yeah, it's a color.

You go and you request it, and there are all sorts of shades I'm using air quotes here, shades of black out there. What that is is pure black, a non color mixed with all sorts of other faint colors that get that nuance it in one direction or another. But ultimately, the idea of like the void, the blackness of space is simply the absence of light altogether, the absence of light, no wavelengths of light approaching your eyes, total darkness, and your brain simply has no information that

it's processing, and so the screen is black. That's the way it works. When wavelengths of light start being introduced, then the brain starts interpreting color. Okay, I don't want to throw too much science stuff on you too fast, but I just want you to understand some stuff. Here's a let me just I'll throw out a fun fact here. What is the most common color on planet Earth? It also happens to be the most rare color in a separate kind of category. So what do you think that is?

What do you think that is? Well? Here, it is the most common color on planet Earth. Shouldn't surprise you. Blue, right, The ocean is blue, the sky is blue. Our planet is often described as a as a blue planet. Okay, blue is the most common color on Earth, kinda kind of what do I mean? Well, the ocean in the sky only actually appear blue. They're not blue. And you're like, wait, what Remember what I said? Color is something that is

interpreted in your head. Obviously. You know, when you pour a glass of water and you look at it, it's not blue. It's clear. It's clear water. Right. If you grab a little chunk of air, put some air inside and you look at it, it's colorless, or at least it appears that way on a small scale. Okay. And no, the sky is not blue because the ocean is blue, and the ocean is not blue because the sky is blue. It just so happens that they're both blue for their

own reasons. The particular chemical composition of our nitrogen oxygen atmosphere and the hydrogen oxygen liquid that we call water, they both tend to absorb the red side of the light spectrum. They absorb it. They don't reflect it back to you, Okay, they absorb it, and so it doesn't come back at our eyes. They absorb the red side of the spectrum, they reflect and distribute the blue side. And so that's why when we look at the sky it has tinted blue, and when we look at the

ocean it is blue. Okay. Both can change, by the way, given certain conditions, like how the sky becomes golden and crimson and orange at sunrise or sunset. And so that's what I mean when I say blue is the most common color. Kind of Also, did you know that blue is everywhere on Earth except in most plants and animals. Blue is actually the rarest biologically produced color. It is the rarest biologically produced pigment, chemically blue pigment. Okay, some,

but not many plants and even fewer animals. Bluebirds, for instance, and blue jays, they're not blue. They get their color not from any real There is no blue pigment in a blue jay, but the surface of their feathers there's scatter light, Okay, there are microscopic beads on their feathers that scatter light in a way that every other wavelength of light is canceled out except blue. And therefore we

see a bluebird or a blue jay as blue. And if you've ever seen a blue jay or a bluebird on a cloudy day, you'll notice, Yeah, they look actually kind of gray. Ah ah ah you see. Okay, So think of it as like what bluebirds and blue jays are any animal that has blue in them, It's kind of like they're wearing noise canceling headphones. Right. The structure of whatever's on their body is literally canceling out everything else except that blue wavelength that's coming at us. Okay, Now,

why am I giving you this trivia? I'm just trying to drive home the point that color is a tricky thing. It truly, truly is a tricky thing, but there are ways around it. Color is psychological, it's also cultural. We need to talk about that little bit, and then we'll start mastering color as we go. All right, you hang tight.

Technically speaking, it's the way that your brain interprets wavelengths of light. Color is not exactly what we think it is. We you know, the most common color on this planet is is actually the least common color on this planet. The most common color on this planet that we perceive is blue, blue, ocean, blue sky, so on. That's not really blue. It's just the way that those chemical environments scatter the rest of the wavelengths of light and only

send blue our way. And that's why it changes so radically. And I told you that blue is the least common biological color, meaning any living thing that produces a pigment of blue extremely rare. In fact, the only exception in nature that we're aware of is the Obrina olive wing butterfly that has two stripes on its wings which are what most people would call cyan, which, by the way, is the primary blue color. The primary color is cyan, and that's what that butterfly has on it. Bluebirds not blue.

And you're like, hey, what about me, I have blue eyes. No you don't. Sorry, people, you should already know this about yourself. That's one of the things people with blue eyes should be able to tell other people. You have blue eyes because you have actually zero pigment in your eyes, none whatsoever. And because of that, the structure of your eyes again like the ocean, like the sky, and it's true, your eyes are like the sky, like pools of water.

It's scientifically true. They are scattering the other spectrums of light and only reflecting black back the blue. And that's why your eyes appear so blue. And you like the blue jay. Yeah, it isn't news anout you like the blue jay. On cloudy days, on overcast days, your eyes are not as blue as they are on sunny, bright days. And that's because they're not actually blue at all. They're just reflecting back what's out there. So that's a problem

with color. Another problem with color is that color is also psychological. There are things built into us as human beings. We react to certain colors psychologically, okay, Like you know, things about red are kind of grounded in human emotions. Red is the color of blood, and so it's difficult for us to see red and not related to excitement, alertness, arousal,

but also danger in stress. So not a lot of stop signs out there in soothing ocean blue, right, stop signs are red, like hello, that's because of our own human psychology, okay, And that's true in a lot of other areas as well. Color is also cultural, and that's an issue. For instance, the Chinese are taught to see red as good luck, taught culturally to see red as

good luck. Chinese brides wear red, not white because in China, white is the color of death or mourning for them, and it is inappropriate for a wedding, Okay, because that is the connotation. If you're like, well, that's weird, Well not if you consider that living things are flushed with color, like what we would say a blushing bride, that's red. Dead things tend to lose their color as in like going white as a ghost. Right, So yeah, it makes

sense from a cultural context, it makes perfect sense. So the point is this are we hopelessly lost in this confusing maze of color. There's psychology, there's culture, there's the physicality of color. There is the physiology of color, there's the chemistry of color.

But we are at the top of the hour, which means when we return, we are going to press pause on our colored discussion, and we are going to go to the phones. The number to reach me eight three three two. Ask Dean eight three three, the numeral two. Ask Dean your home with Dean Sharp the house Whisper on KFI. This has been Home with Dean Sharp, the

House Whisper. Tune into the live broadcast on KFI AM six forty every Saturday morning from six to eight Pacific time, and every Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app,