Azure (heraldic)
Cobalt (cobaltous oxide prepared with alumina)

Description
Very intense light blues, as in the colour of a Mediterranean sky on a fine day. The pigment cobalt blue when prepared with alumina gives it a reddish tinge. Heraldic blue (azure) is today a light, saturated sky blue (though in the Middle Ages it could be a Hyacinthine blue). It is not easy to mix these blues without cobalt blue.

Psycho-factor
When blue is intensified and lightened it becomes airy or ‘pneumatic’, and as such, a good colour symbol for concepts relating to buoyancy (floating in the sky sensation), for example liberation, escapism, getting away from it all.

Aesthetic Effects
The light blues tend to make greys and subtle colours look yellowish. They intensify and enchance orange and yellow hues especially when they’re subtle nuances.

Examples

Interiors

The light blues are very good at giving an impression of space and air. They can arrange the apparent stuffyness of a room and make it appear cooler. Unobtrusive blues may also, in some scenarios, make time appear to pass more quickly.

Products

The light blues are generally very flattering to many foods, bringing out the rich crusty and golden browns particularly.

Focus now turns to the Ultramarine Blues (left).

Cornflower • Gentian Blue • Deep Hyacinth Blue • Deep Moorish Blue • Royal Blue • Stewart Tartan Blue • Lapis Lazuli • Ultramarine (synthetic lapis lazuli).

Description
Deep fully saturated blue on the red side of the spectrum. A flower of this colour was named after a legendary Greek youth, Hyacinthos, whose blood, shed when accidently slain by a discus, changed into the flower, Hyacinth, originally meaning a red purple colour. In Biblical times, it was a purple blue and in early Christian art was represented by lapis lazuli. It is not easy to mix the Hyacinthine blues from other colours.

Psycho-factor
A colour long associated with status. The illusory receding qualities of blue (useful in symbolism relating to distance and other-worldliness) is through the addition of a red content, paradoxically brought forward to provide an excellent colour symbol for ‘militant spiritual’ or alternatively ardent idealism, such as the idealogical campaign, etc.

Aesthetic effects
Enchances yellows and brassy golds. At full intensity it is the most commanding of the blues, deep, rich and vibrant.

Examples

Interiors

Can be a particularly useful colour in an assembly room or a hall of a school, in a form of context such as a town hall or in a spiritual meeting house, church, chapel or mosque.

Products
In small plastic products these colours at full intensity have a certain vibrant ‘magic’ which makes them popular with articles of high prestige.

To the left is Peacock Blue.

Peacock blue • Kingfisher blue • Honey Bird • Turquoise • Cobalt blue (having a greenish tinge when prepared with zinc sulphate).

Psycho factor
With thier greener content these colours come closer to the ‘biologic’ greens which have played an importnant role in colour symbolism as representing the convept of ‘life-essence’. Peacock blues, however, still preserve the distance and remoteness of blue and give a sense of aloodnes. This makes the greenish blues including peacock blue especially, good symbols of pride or even narcism.

Aesthetic effects
The narcicism of turquoise is enchanced by the fact that flesh colour placed against this colour will usually seem to look healthier, because of warm orange glow is enduced into flesh by afterimage of the turquoise.

Examples

Interiors

Walls of these ‘health-giving’ colours might be used more often in doctors’ surgeries together with plenty of mirrors.

Products
An elegant colour for all sorts of purposes, especially where one wants to have a certain sense of pride such as in office equipment and domestic products from tableware and bathroom fittings and decor.

Finally, we come to the Denim blues.

Indigo • Ming blue • Dusky blue.

Description
True denim blues are soft-toned darkish blues, usually of a slightish reddish cast, like a faded Indigo (Isatis tinctoria, the original Indigo, a reddish blue) or even like a faded wode, but simulated with modern dyes. Denim blues can be compared to Ming blue of the famous blue and white Chinese porcelain of the 14th century. An equivalent Indian blue is the legendary Dusky called Shyam, which is as much a metaphysical essence as a colour, being an effect seen in the aura which emanents in the lotus form of a Chakra from the throat. It is the symbolic colour of air and a particular note in music. Such colours can be mixed from Ultramarine and light grey.

Psycho factor
Is a good example of the blue of what Maz Luscher calls ‘passive heteronomy’, that is to say the state in which ones consciousness, beset by ideological anxieties and fantasies, seeks inner or spiritual harmony and refuge.

Aesthetic effects
Denim blues render flesh a bit more sallow and bronze in effect for which boys and youths (and perhaps tom boys and liberated women) might be expected to have and unconscious preference. This is different from the effect of cobalt and syanide blues which tend to bring out the peach and pink colours in exposed flesh.

Examples

Interiors

A similar colour to denim but a bit darker and more saturated blue used for walls is ‘Midnight Blue’ also known as ‘Muhammedan Blue’.

Products

While denim is an excellent colour for trousers and is an attractive colour for vechicles it is not recommended for cars. Studies suggest that it is the most accident prone of all colours. The bad record of blue generally on the road maybe because they appear a little further away than they actually are (see colour in Illusion under Science). Moreover, it’s just possible that many drivers choosing blue for their cars maybe more relaxed and dreamy, or otherwordly, than other drivers.

Continue on to the Green Array or
Return to 'The Significance and Usage of Individual Colours'.