The most relaxing colour in the world? Dark blue apparently

Another day, another survey, but here’s one with a difference.

Rather than confirming which brand of fizzy drink under-14s in rural Northamptonshire prefer to glug when playing their 18th solid hour of Fortnite, or telling us which Beatle the good people of Nuneaton would rather have a lamb bhuna with, a study conducted by paper manufacturers G.F Smith has found the world’s most relaxing colour.

Commissioned off the back of findings from another survey (in which the Mental Health Foundation came to the conclusion that “nearly three quarters of Britons have felt overwhelmed by stress in the last year”), this one reveals that of the 26,000 from people across the globe who were polled, it was dark blue which tended to have respondents sinking into a state of colourific contentment.

The respondents were asked to associate specific emotions with specific colours. With this done, and making use of what G.F Smith describes as “sophisticated algorithms,” a colour-coded emotional map of sorts has been produced.

“Colour has always had an intrinsic relationship with our culture and is woven into our consciousness. The story of colour maps a particular history through our cultural development — telling a much larger story about the way we perceive, value and cherish colour,” says G.F Smith’s joint managing director John Haslam.

The World’s Favourite Colour Project, as it’s been named, has also found that we tend to associate the future with shades of green, luxury with purples and oranges, and red is the one we tend to tie to passion.