Colour and emotion
The colours of trust
Blue is the colour of trust in business and public life. Many languages use white for honesty, and Chinese opera uses red for loyalty.
Presented by ClearTrust Free for designers, students and the curious.
Blue is the colour most used to signal trust. Banks, insurers, police forces, airlines and the United Nations all wear it. The reasons are modest: blue is the best liked colour in most surveys, it offends almost no one, and it has few bad meanings. In everyday speech, though, honesty is more often white. A clean record, a pure heart and an unstained name are white in Arabic, Turkish, German, Hindi and Chinese. Evidence that blue makes people trust anything more is slight.
What studies find
Blue is the favourite colour of most adults in most countries surveyed. Stephen Palmer and Karen Schloss proposed in 2010 that people like colours tied to things they like, and blue goes with clear sky and clean water. In marketing research, Lauren Labrecque and George Milne found in 2012 that people rated invented logos in blue as more competent. That is a rating of made-up brands in a lab. With real companies, trust depends on experience, price and reputation, and colour's share is small. Emotion surveys rarely include trust at all, so the claim that blue means trust comes mainly from the design trade.
In language
English has 'true blue' for a loyal person, a phrase often traced to the fast blue dye of Coventry cloth, and 'blue-chip' for a dependable company. Honesty elsewhere is white. Arabic praises a kind, guileless person as having a 'white heart'. Germans with a clean record wear a 'white waistcoat' (weiße Weste). In Chinese, qingbai, 'clear and white', means innocent. The opposites are black: a 'black heart' in Chinese, a 'black belly' (haraguroi) in Japanese for a schemer. One trap is worth knowing. An English 'white lie' is harmless, but a Hindi 'safed jhooth', white lie, is a barefaced one.
Around the world
Chinese opera paints trustworthiness on the face. A red face means loyalty and courage, as with the general Guan Yu. A black face means blunt honesty, and a white face marks a cunning schemer. In India, politicians have long worn white khadi, the hand-spun cloth promoted by Gandhi, as a sign of simple living and service. In British wedding custom a bride wears 'something blue', an old sign of faithfulness. Blue helmets and the pale blue flag mark United Nations peacekeepers as neutral. The doctor's white coat, adopted in the late nineteenth century, borrowed the look of the laboratory to win patients' confidence.
Where it is used
Blue dominates the logos of banks, insurers, software firms and social networks. IBM has been 'Big Blue' for decades, and in India the State Bank of India and many public bodies use blue. Police uniforms are blue or dark navy in a great many countries. Hospitals use blue and white for staff and signs. This very popularity weakens the signal. When every bank is blue, blue tells customers little, and some firms now choose green, orange or purple to stand apart. Trust is earned by conduct. Colour can only avoid getting in the way, which is why safe, quiet colours are chosen.
Trust in colour, place by place
In Peking opera a red painted face marks a loyal, brave character such as Guan Yu. A black face is blunt and upright, and a white one is treacherous.
A loyal person is 'true blue', and a bride traditionally wears 'something blue' as a sign of faithfulness.
White khadi, the hand-spun cloth promoted by Gandhi, became the dress of Indian politicians as a sign of simplicity and public service.
In Arabic a kind, sincere person without malice is said to have a 'white heart', qalb abyad.
A person who schemes behind a pleasant manner is haraguroi, 'black-bellied', the reverse of a clean, open heart.
IBM has long been nicknamed 'Big Blue', and blue remains the most common logo colour among large American banks and technology firms.
Someone with a spotless record has 'eine weiße Weste', a white waistcoat, with no stain on it.
From the table of meanings
To be true blue is to be honestly and loyally Australian. The phrase is older than the country, but Australians have made it their own.
Politics and protestTrustSource: True Blue (John Williamson song)Officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police wear the Red Serge, a scarlet tunic with a high collar, on ceremonial duty. It is one of the best known images of the country abroad.
Protection and healingTrustSource: Red SergeA red cross on white, the Swiss flag reversed, marks medical staff and aid workers in war and must not be attacked under the Geneva Conventions.
Protection and healingTrustSource: Emblems of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent MovementThe blue disc at the centre of the flag, added in 1996, stands for peace. The star on it is for the unity and equality of the country's peoples.
Politics and protestTrustSource: Emblem of EthiopiaThe white stripe at the hoist of the flag stands for the country's religious minorities. Together the green and white are the national colours.
Politics and protestTrustSource: Flag of PakistanMembers of the governing People's Action Party wear white shirts and trousers at party events. The uniform is meant to show clean, honest government.
Politics and protestPurity and peaceTrustSource: People's Action PartyThe nazar boncugu is a blue glass bead with a white and dark blue eye. It hangs on doors, cars and babies' clothes to turn away the evil eye.
Protection and healingTrustSource: Nazar (amulet)The flag's colours have no official meaning. For the Great Seal of 1782, though, blue was said to stand for vigilance, perseverance and justice, white for purity and red for hardiness and valour.
Politics and protestTrustSource: Flag of the United StatesColours that carry trust
More colours our sources tie to trust
Sources and further reading
- Blue on Wikipedia
- Labrecque and Milne, Exciting red and competent blue: the importance of color in marketing (Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2012)
- Palmer and Schloss, An ecological valence theory of human color preference (PNAS, 2010)
- United Nations: UN emblem and flag
- Visit Beijing: Facial make-up in Peking Opera
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