Colour and emotion
The colours of love
Red and pink carry love almost everywhere: red roses, red bridal dress in India and China, the red thread of fate in East Asia.
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Love is red and pink. This is the most widely shared colour and emotion pairing after yellow and joy, and it holds across every continent that has been surveyed. Red is the stronger, older symbol: blood, the heart, the rose, the bride's dress in India and China. Pink is the gentler one and, in studies, the more reliable, because red has a second meaning. Red is also the colour of anger and danger. No other colour is tied so firmly to one good feeling and one bad one at the same time.
What studies find
In the 30-nation survey led by Domicele Jonauskaite, red was the only colour strongly linked to both a positive feeling, love, and a negative one, anger. Pink was linked to love with fewer mixed signals. Experiments on attraction are less solid. A well-known 2008 study by Andrew Elliot and Daniela Niesta reported that men rated women as more attractive when they were shown with red. A 2018 meta-analysis, which pools many studies, found the effect to be small and saw signs that positive results were more likely to be published. Larger, stricter replications have often found little or nothing. The symbol is real. The idea that wearing red changes how others respond is not secure.
In language
In Chinese a matchmaker is a hongniang, a 'red lady', and lovers are said to be joined by a red thread tied by the old man under the moon. Japan shares the story as the red thread of fate, akai ito. In Hindi and Urdu, to be 'dyed in someone's colour' (kisi ke rang mein rangna) is to be absorbed in love for them, an image that runs from Sufi poetry to film songs. Spanish and Italian call romantic fiction the 'pink novel' (novela rosa, romanzo rosa), and French calls a sentimental story 'rose water'. Persian poetry pairs the red rose with the nightingale that sings to it.
Around the world
Red is the bride's colour across much of Asia. In north India many Hindu brides marry in red, and married women traditionally wear red sindoor powder in the parting of the hair. In China the bride's dress, the invitations and the gift envelopes are red. In Europe and the Americas the bride wears white and red goes to the roses. The oldest Indian writing on drama, the Natyashastra, gives the mood of love a dark colour, shyama, the dusky blue-black of Krishna. Among Zulu speakers in South Africa, beadwork tokens given between sweethearts use colour as a code whose meanings shift from one district to another.
Where it is used
Valentine's Day sells red and pink in almost every country that marks it: roses, hearts, cards and chocolate boxes. Japan adds White Day on 14 March, when those who received chocolate give a gift in return, and white joins the palette. The heart emoji is red by default. Film uses red sparingly to mark desire, a dress or a lipstick against a quiet background. Dating apps and romance publishers favour warm reds and pinks. The same red means stop, sale and error elsewhere, so designers usually soften it towards rose or pair it with a heart shape to keep the meaning clear.
Love in colour, place by place
Many Hindu brides in north India marry in red, and married women traditionally wear red sindoor in the parting of the hair as a sign of marriage.
Lovers are said to be tied by a red thread from birth. The bride's dress, the invitations and the wedding decorations are red.
On White Day, 14 March, people who received chocolate on Valentine's Day give a gift in return. Confectioners began the custom in the late 1970s.
Zulu beadwork tokens exchanged by sweethearts carry messages in colour. What each colour says depends on the district and on the colours beside it.
Persian poetry and painting pair the red rose with the nightingale, gol o bolbol, as the beloved and the lover who sings to her.
Romantic fiction is called the 'pink novel', novela rosa in Spanish and romanzo rosa in Italian.
Red roses and red hearts became the standard Valentine's Day gift in the nineteenth century, helped by cheap printed cards.
From the table of meanings
A Bengali Muslim bride usually marries in a red sari, often a Benarasi or a Jamdani, with gold jewellery.
Weddings and marriageLoveSource: Bengali Muslim weddingMany Hindu brides marry in a red sari or lehenga. In much of north India a married woman wears sindoor, a red powder, along the parting of her hair.
Weddings and marriageLuck and prosperityJoyLoveSource: SindoorBrides most often marry in red, usually a heavily embroidered lehenga or gharara. The night before, the mehndi ceremony stains their hands with deep red-brown henna.
Weddings and marriageJoyLoveSource: MehndiTraditional embroidered shirts, vyshyvanky, are most often stitched in red and black. A well-loved song says that red is for love and black is for sorrow.
Love and desireProtection and healingLoveSource: VyshyvankaColours that carry love
More colours our sources tie to love
Sources and further reading
- Color symbolism on Wikipedia
- Jonauskaite and colleagues, Universal patterns in color-emotion associations (Psychological Science, 2020)
- Jonauskaite and Mohr, Do we feel colours? A systematic review of 128 years of research (Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 2025)
- Lehmann, Elliot and Calin-Jageman, Meta-analysis of the effect of red on perceived attractiveness (Evolutionary Psychology, 2018)
Original text by the Rang desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Meanings of colour vary from place to place and person to person. If we have something wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Lavender: User:Fir0002, GFDL 1.2, source
- Red: Politikaner, CC BY-SA 3.0, source