Colour and emotion
The colours of sadness
English feels blue, but studies tie sadness more firmly to grey and black. In China white can be sad, and in Brazil 'all blue' means all is well.
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In English, sadness is blue. Across the world it is more often grey or black. Studies find that dark and washed-out colours are linked to sadness far more reliably than any single hue, and that blue's sad meaning is strong mainly where English and its neighbours are spoken. Elsewhere blue is the sky, a god's skin or simply a favourite colour. The safest summary is that sadness drains colour. The duller and darker a shade, the more likely people are to call it sad.
What studies find
The 2025 review by Jonauskaite and Mohr found grey and black linked to sadness in about three quarters of studies, and blue in about half. In the 30-nation survey, black was the strongest match for sadness overall. Two local patterns stood out: white was tied to sadness more in China than elsewhere, and purple more in Greece. In the Manchester Color Wheel study, people with anxiety or depression most often chose grey to stand for their mood, while healthy people chose yellow. These are choices from a chart, not proof that grey rooms sadden anyone. Lightness and saturation explain most of the pattern.
In language
English has 'feeling blue', 'the blues' and the older 'blue devils' for low spirits. Japanese has borrowed the word as buruu for feeling down. Other languages go darker. The word melancholy comes from the Greek for black bile. The French brood by 'grinding black' (broyer du noir), Spanish speakers 'see everything black', and English has the 'black dog' of depression. Chinese calls a discouraged person 'grey-hearted' (huixin). Blue does not travel well: in German, blau sein means to be drunk, and in Brazilian Portuguese 'tudo azul', all blue, means everything is fine.
Around the world
Blue as a sad colour is largely a habit of English and some neighbouring cultures. In India blue is the colour of Krishna and Rama and has no sad ring. The Natyashastra, the classical treatise on drama, gives karuna, the mood of sorrow, a dove grey. In China sadness leans towards white because white belongs to funerals. In West Africa, indigo cloth is prized and festive. What does seem shared is the pull of darkness and dullness. Overcast skies, dusk and ash are everyday experiences everywhere, and languages on several continents reach for grey and black when spirits fall.
Where it is used
The blues, the music that grew among African Americans in the southern United States, gave the colour its most famous use. Picasso's Blue Period, from about 1901 to 1904, painted beggars and outcasts in cold blues after a friend's death. The character Sadness in Inside Out is blue from hair to shoes. Film makers drain colour from a scene to show low mood, and grey weather does the same job in novels. 'Blue Monday', the so-called saddest day of the year, began as a 2005 travel company press release and has no scientific basis.
Sadness in colour, place by place
The blues grew among African Americans in the Deep South in the late nineteenth century and gave English its best known colour word for sorrow.
The word melancholy is Greek for black bile, the body fluid that ancient Greek medicine blamed for lasting sadness.
In a 30-nation survey, people in China linked white with sadness more than people elsewhere, in line with white's place at funerals.
In Brazilian Portuguese 'tudo azul', all blue, means that everything is going well. Blue here is the clear sky, not sorrow.
The Natyashastra gives karuna, the mood of sorrow and compassion, the colour of a dove: a soft grey.
To brood in French is 'broyer du noir', to grind black, and dark thoughts are 'idées noires'.
From the table of meanings
The black band of the flag is also linked with the black coat that Estonian peasant men once wore.
Nature and renewalSadnessSource: Flag of EstoniaKuntunkuni is a dark brown mourning cloth of the Asante, dyed with tree bark. Adinkra cloth, stamped with symbols, was first made on such dark grounds for funerals.
Mourning and deathSadnessSource: Adinkra symbolsPurple is traditionally the colour a widow wears in mourning, so some people avoid it at happy events. It is also Saturday's colour in the weekday scheme.
Mourning and deathSadnessSource: PurpleColours that carry sadness
More colours our sources tie to sadness
Sources and further reading
- Blues on Wikipedia
- Jonauskaite and Mohr, Do we feel colours? A systematic review of 128 years of research (Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 2025)
- Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz: Colors evoke similar feelings around the world
- Carruthers and colleagues, The Manchester Color Wheel (BMC Medical Research Methodology, 2010)
- Guggenheim Museum: Pablo Picasso, Woman Ironing (1904)
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.
- Blue: Marie-Lan Nguyen, Public domain, source