The colours of calm

The Qur'an describes the people of paradise dressed in green silk, and green is loved across the Muslim world as a colour of rest and blessing.

The white middle band of the Indian flag stands for peace and truth, and plain white dress is widely read as a sign of peace.

Several railway companies installed blue lights on platforms to deter suicides. Studies of whether they work have reached mixed conclusions.

Baker-Miller pink was tested in a naval jail in Seattle in 1979 and reported to calm inmates. Later controlled studies did not confirm it.

Some Swiss prisons and police stations painted cells pink to calm detainees. A controlled study in a Swiss prison found no effect on aggression.

The old town of Chefchaouen is washed in pale blue. Explanations for the custom differ, but visitors widely describe the effect as peaceful.

Light blue and white are the colours of Iemanja, the sea goddess of Candomble and Umbanda. On 2 February in Salvador her followers send flowers and gifts out to sea.

The old colour word qing covers green, blue and the shades between. In the five-element system it belongs to wood, the east and spring.

Orthodox Christians go to church wrapped in the netela, a thin white cotton shawl. At Timkat, the feast of Epiphany, crowds in white follow the priests to the water.

On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, many Jews dress in white, and some men wear a white robe called a kittel. On kibbutzim, white is also worn for the harvest festival of Shavuot.

A bride at a Shinto wedding may wear the shiromuku, a kimono that is white from head to foot. White is also the colour of the paper streamers that mark sacred places.

Buddhist monks in saffron and orange robes walk out each morning to collect food. Most Khmer men traditionally spent some time as a monk.

At dawn in Luang Prabang, lines of monks in orange robes walk the streets to receive sticky rice from kneeling townspeople.

Buddhist monks wear robes from bright saffron to deep maroon, and the shade often shows which monastic order a monk belongs to.

The old town of Chefchaouen in the Rif mountains is washed in shades of blue. The reasons given vary: a Jewish custom, keeping houses cool, or keeping mosquitoes away.

Buddhist nuns, called thilashin, shave their heads and wear pale pink robes with an orange or brown under-robe.

In Yoruba religion, white belongs to Obatala, the orisha who shaped human bodies. His priests and followers wear white cloth and offer white foods.

The blue border of the flag stands for peace. The crimson inside it is read as the bravery of the Nepali people.

At Parihaka in Taranaki, the followers of Te Whiti and Tohu wore white feathers, raukura, as a sign of peaceful resistance to the taking of their land.

The flag is white, red and green. White is for peace, red for the battles of the past, and green for the Jebel Akhdar, the Green Mountain.